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Dessert

Rice Snow Balls

Rice snow balls are boiled rice parcels filled with apples, served with sugar, butter, or wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,207 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Rice Snow Balls

6 parcels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash and pick the rice very clean.

  2. Put the rice in a saucepan with plenty of water and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil the rice for 10 minutes, then drain it on a sieve until dry.

Cook and serve

  1. Pare the apples and divide the rice into 6 parcels.

  2. Place one apple in each rice parcel, tie loosely in cloth, and boil for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with sugar and butter or wine sauce.

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 + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 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

Rice
Forms the starchy outer coating that swells and sets around each apple as it cooks.
Apples
Provide the sweet, moist filling that softens inside the rice wrapping during boiling.

The step that matters

Drain the rice until dry. Surface water left on the cooked rice would make the parcels soggy and loose, so they may not hold their shape when tied in cloth and boiled.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, butter, wine, sauce. 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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