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Dessert

Apple Snowballs

Apple Snowballs are apples wrapped in boiled rice, then boiled again.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,311 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Snowballs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice and apples

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly and boil it for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice and spread it on small floured pudding cloths.

  3. Peel and core the apples, then fill the centers with sugar.

Wrap and boil

  1. Place the apples on the rice and tie them in the cloths.

  2. Boil the wrapped apples for 20 minutes.

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. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples
Soften during boiling to form the soft, tart centre of each snowball.
Rice
Its starch swells and sets around the apple, forming the outer coating.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple centres and dissolves into their juices as they cook.

The step that matters

Tying the apples in the cloths. The rice must be packed evenly around each apple so it forms a complete, firm coat. Loose or uneven wrapping lets rice cook unevenly and leaves bare patches where the apple can break through.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar. 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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