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Dessert

Snow Ball Pudding

A rice pudding made by boiling rice, shaping into balls, and serving with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Snow Ball Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Pick out imperfections from the rice and wash it in two or three waters.

Cook

  1. In a large saucepan, combine the rice with 1 quart of water or milk.

  2. Cover the pan and boil gently for one hour, until the liquid is absorbed.

Shape and serve

  1. Dip teacups in cold water, fill them with the boiled rice, and press to shape.

  2. Turn the rice out onto a dish and serve with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as its starch swells and softens during gentle boiling.
Water or milk
Provides the liquid the rice absorbs as it cooks, setting its final moisture and creaminess.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and softens the served rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the plain cooked rice.

The step that matters

Boiling gently until the liquid is absorbed. Rice cooked too hard can break apart or scorch on the bottom, while too little heat leaves it firm. A gentle simmer lets the grains swell evenly and absorb the liquid, so the rice holds together when pressed into shape.

“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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