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Dessert

Apple Snowball

A steamed rice cake with apple, sugar, and cinnamon, served with creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Snowball

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. In a double boiler, cook the rice with salt, milk, and water until all the liquid is absorbed.

Fill the moulds

  1. Butter small moulds or cups and line them with ½ inch of hot rice.

  2. Place a quarter of a sour apple in the center and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon or lemon juice.

  3. Cover the apple with more rice and steam for 30 minutes in a steamer or in a pan of hot water on the stove.

Finish and serve

  1. For best results, slightly cook the apples beforehand.

  2. Serve with creamy sauce and take care to remove them from the moulds without losing shape.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells as it cooks and sets as it cools, forming the shell that holds the dish's shape.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the rice as it absorbs the liquid.
Sour apple
Provides moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sourness of the apple.

The step that matters

Removing the snowballs from the moulds. The rice starch sets as it cools and firms up. If the rice is unmoulded while still soft and hot, the shell can tear or collapse, so it must be given time to set before release.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, cinnamon, butter, sauce. 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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