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Dessert

Snow-balls

Rice and apple balls made by wrapping cooked rice around apples, boiled, and served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Snow-balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook rice in milk until tender, then strain.

  2. Peel and core the apples.

  3. Wrap rice around each apple and tie in a cloth.

  4. Add a piece of lemon peel, a clove, or cinnamon to each apple.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the wrapped apples until cooked through.

  2. Serve with butter, either warm or cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk and wrapped around the apple, it forms the tender outer layer.
Milk
Cooks the rice until soft and creamy, adding moisture and richness.
Apples
Provide the core filling that softens and sweetens during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the wrapped apples until cooked through. If the water is too cool or the boil too weak, the rice and apple will not cook through evenly. Keeping the water at a steady boil and checking that the apple is soft at the centre ensures the rice sets properly and the fruit is tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, apple, clove, cinnamon, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, apple, clove, cinnamon, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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