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Dessert

Apple Snowballs

A dish of boiled apples wrapped in rice, sweetened with sugar and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Snowballs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice in water until three-quarters cooked, then strain.

  2. Pare and core the apples without cutting them in half.

  3. Place a small amount of sugar and a clove inside each apple.

Wrap and boil

  1. Mold the rice around each apple and tie them in a cloth.

  2. Boil the wrapped apples until they are tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the cloths and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Rice + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

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

  5. 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

Rice
Its starch cooks into a soft, cohesive coating that holds its shape around each apple.
Apples
Fruit that softens during boiling and turns tender and sweet inside the rice wrap.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, dissolving slightly into the apple as it cooks.
Cloves
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the apple.

The step that matters

Mold the rice around each apple and tie them in a cloth.. The rice must be packed evenly and firmly around each apple. Uneven or loose rice can crack or fall apart while boiling, leaving the apple exposed.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, apple, 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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