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Dessert

To Make Snow Balls

A dessert of baked apples filled with marmalade, coated in icing, garnished with green sprigs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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To Make Snow Balls

Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Snow Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare the apples.

  2. Scoop out the cores.

  3. Fill the holes with marmalade.

Make the crust

  1. Make a hot paste.

  2. Roll the apples in the paste.

  3. Prepare a crust of equal thickness.

  4. Place the apples in a tin dripping pan.

Bake, ice and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  2. Once baked, ice the apples with icing about ¼ inch thick.

  3. Set them away from the fire to harden without browning.

  4. Arrange one apple in the center of a china dish and the other five around it.

  5. Garnish with green sprigs or small flowers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Orange + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking apples
Hold their shape while baking and provide the soft, tart fruit filling.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bittersweet citrus aroma inside the apples.
Flour
Forms the hot paste that binds and shapes the crust around the apples.
Icing
Forms a sweet, firm white coating that hardens as the apples cool.

The step that matters

Set them away from the fire to harden without browning. Icing is mostly sugar, and high heat can brown it before it sets. Gentle, indirect warmth dries the icing into a firm, pale shell.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, flour. 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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