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Dessert

Apple Snowballs

A boiled dish of apples stuffed with sugar and clove, wrapped in rice, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

  1. Boil the rice and milk until three-quarters done, then strain.

  2. Pare and core the apples without dividing them.

  3. Place a small amount of sugar and a clove into each apple.

Cook and serve

  1. Surround the apples with rice and tie each ball in a cloth.

  2. Boil until the apples are tender.

  3. Remove the cloths and serve.

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 a starchy coating around each apple that thickens and holds the dumpling together as it cooks.
Apples
Provide the core of each dumpling, softening as they cook while keeping their shape under the cloth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooked apple taste rich and rounded.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to give it a creamy, tender texture and a soft, mild flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the rice and milk until three-quarters done, then strain.. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and softening as it cooks. Stopping at three-quarters done leaves it firm enough to wrap the apples, since it finishes softening during the final boil.

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.

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