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Dessert

Apple Snowballs

A dessert of apples filled with sugar, coated in boiled rice, and boiled until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Add the rice and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Peel the apples.

  4. Remove the cores without cutting them.

  5. Insert a clove into each apple.

  6. Fill each apple with sugar.

Make the snowballs

  1. Coat each apple with the boiled rice.

  2. Wrap each apple in a cloth dipped in hot water.

  3. Boil the wrapped apples until tender, about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the snowballs and place them on a dish.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Cooks the rice into a thick, creamy mixture that can coat the apples.
Rice
Forms a starchy coating that thickens as it cooks and clings around each apple.
Apples
Soften as they boil, becoming tender while the cloth holds their rounded shape.
Cloves
Add a warm, spiced aroma to the apples as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and the finished snowballs.

The step that matters

Remove the cores without cutting them. The apple must stay whole so the sugar filling stays inside and the rice coating holds an even round shape. A cut through the apple lets sugar leak out and the coating break apart during boiling.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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