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Dessert

American Snow Balls

A boiled dessert of apples wrapped in rice, seasoned with lemon peel, cinnamon, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

American Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice in milk until it swells and becomes soft.

  2. Core the apples and fill each with a little grated lemon peel and cinnamon.

  3. Place enough rice on a piece of linen to cover each apple completely and tie them securely.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the wrapped apples for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with melted butter sweetened with sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells in milk and forms a soft starchy coating that wraps around each apple.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
Apples
Soften during boiling, becoming tender and moist inside the rice wrapping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce served with the apples.
Sugar
Sweetens the melted butter served alongside the apples.

The step that matters

Tie the linen securely. The rice must cover each apple completely and stay in place during the long boil. A loose or uneven wrap lets rice fall away and water seep in, so the apple cooks unevenly and the shape is lost.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, rice, milk, cinnamon, butter, 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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