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Dessert

Apple Snow Balls

A dessert of apples wrapped in rice, boiled, then flavored with nutmeg, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Reassemble the apple quarters in their original shape.

  3. Place a clove and a slice of lemon peel in the cavity of each apple.

Wrap and boil

  1. Cover each apple with rice using pudding cloths, tying them tightly.

  2. Boil the wrapped apples in a large saucepan of scalding water for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the wrapped apples from the water.

Finish

  1. Open the tops of the wrapped apples.

  2. Mix in grated nutmeg, butter, and sugar to taste.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the body of the dish, softening as they cook inside the rice wrap.
Rice
Forms an outer wrap that cooks into a starchy coating around each apple.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cooked apple.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished apples.

The step that matters

Tying the cloths tightly. The rice must stay packed around each apple during the long boil. Loose cloths let the rice spread or wash away, leaving the apple exposed to the water.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, lemon, rice, nutmeg, butter, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, lemon, rice, nutmeg, 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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