Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓
Snowballs
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Pare and core the apples, filling the holes with marmalade.
Roll out the hot paste thinly and cover each apple neatly.
Bake and finish
Place the apples on a baking sheet and bake until done, being careful not to crack them.
Once baked and nearly cool, cover each apple with icing neatly.
Lightly add icing on top to represent snow.
Set the apples in a warm place for 30 minutes before serving.
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.
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Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together506 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Baking apples
- Soften when baked and provide the main body and moisture of the dessert.
- Quince or apricot marmalade
- Fills the core, adding sweetness and fruity flavour as it warms.
- Hot paste
- Forms a pastry shell that bakes around each apple and holds it together.
The step that matters
Placing the apples on the baking sheet and baking until done without cracking them. Pastry sealed around a whole apple traps steam as it heats; if the paste is too thin or the apple expands too fast, it can split and let filling leak out.
“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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