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Dessert

To Make Snowballs

A dessert of boiled rice and apples wrapped in cloth, sweetened with sugar and lemon peel, served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

To Make Snowballs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Half boil the rice.

  2. Peel the apples.

  3. Scoop out the cores.

  4. Fill each core hole with pounded sugar and a little chopped lemon peel.

  5. Prepare small pudding cloths.

Wrap the apples

  1. Place a large teacupful of rice on each cloth.

  2. Place an apple on top of the rice.

  3. Add a little rice on top of the apple.

  4. Gather the cloth around the apple and rice.

  5. Tie it tightly with string.

  6. Repeat until all apples are used.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 45 minutes, being careful not to break them.

  2. Serve with melted butter and 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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 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 a starchy coating that holds each apple together during boiling.
Apples
Soften as they cook, becoming tender and sweet-tart inside the rice wrapping.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple cores and balances the tartness of the cooked fruit.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aroma to the sugar filling inside each apple core.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished snowballs when served.

The step that matters

Boil for 45 minutes without breaking the snowballs. The cloth must be tied firmly so the rice and apple stay wrapped. A rolling, vigorous boil can burst the cloth or split the softening apple, so keep the water at a gentle simmer for the full time.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, lemon, 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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