Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Snowballs

A boiled dish of apples wrapped in milk‑boiled rice, sweetened with sugar and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Boil the rice in milk until three-quarters cooked.

  2. Strain the rice.

Fill and wrap the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples without cutting them in half.

  2. Place a small amount of sugar and a clove inside each apple.

  3. Wrap the rice around each apple.

  4. Tie them separately in a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil until the apples are tender.

  2. Remove from the water and take off the cloths.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Rice + milktop 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. Rice + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  5. Rice + appletop 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
Forms the outer coating that wraps and holds each apple while it cooks.
Apples
Provide the soft, sweet fruit centre that becomes tender during boiling.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture inside each apple as it softens.
Cloves
Add a warm, spicy aroma that infuses the apple as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in milk until three-quarters cooked. Stopping at three-quarters lets the rice finish softening during the final boil without turning mushy. Rice starch gelatinises with heat and water, so undercooking leaves it firm and overcooking makes it break apart around the apple.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes