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Dessert

Apple Snowballs

Apple Snowballs are apples filled with sugar, wrapped in cooked rice, boiled, and served with extra sugar.

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 ↓

Apple Snowballs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Simmer the rice in the milk with salt until all the milk is absorbed.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples, keeping them whole.

  2. Fill the center of each apple with sugar and insert a clove if desired.

  3. Cover each apple with the cooked rice and tie in a pudding cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Place in boiling water and boil gently for 45 to 60 minutes.

  2. Serve with additional 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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  4. Clove + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  5. Apple + ricetop 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

Rice
Cooked in milk, it forms the starchy coating that encloses each apple as it boils.
Apples
Keep their shape while cooking and soften into a tender, moist filling inside the rice.
Milk
Cooks the rice into a creamy, tender coating that holds the apple together.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple at its center and draws out some of its juices as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice until the milk is absorbed. If the rice is left with liquid or cooked unevenly, it will be too wet or too firm to cover and hold each apple. Cooking it until the milk is fully absorbed gives a thick, cohesive layer that stays intact during boiling.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, milk, rice):

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

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