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Dessert

Snow-balls

Rice Apple Dumplings are boiled rice and apple balls flavored with lemon peel and cinnamon, served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Snow-balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the rice in milk until tender, then strain it.

  2. Wrap the cooked rice around each peeled and cored apple and tie them in a cloth.

  3. Add a piece of lemon peel, a clove of cinnamon, or a pinch of cinnamon to each apple.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the wrapped apples well.

  2. Serve with butter, either in the dish or cold.

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the soft wrapping that cooks around the apple and holds its shape.
Milk
Cooks the rice into a tender, creamy coating that adds richness.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and turns sweet-tart when boiled.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished dumplings when served.

The step that matters

Boil the wrapped apples well. The cloth-wrapped rice needs enough time in simmering water for the rice to become fully tender and the apple to soften through. Underboiling leaves the rice firm and the apple raw in the center.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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