Home › The Principles of Cookery › Orange Snow-Balls
Orange Snow-Balls
Throw half a pound of best Carolina rice loose into a saucepan of boiling water, and boil it quickly for five minutes. Peel four sweet oranges, and carefully remove the thick white skin without injuring the fruit. Drain the rice, and when it is cool spread it out in four equal parts on four small pudding cloths. Place one of the pared oranges on each of these, gather the cloth carefully round it, and tie it securely. Plunge the dumplings into boiling water, and let them remain on the fire until done enough. Turn them out carefully, sprinkle powdered sugar over them, and send orange sauce to table with them. Time to boil, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for four persons.
A steamed rice dumpling with a whole orange at its centre, boiled in cloths. It works, but the cloths and the timing need attention.
- The hinge: tie looselyThe rice is only half-cooked when it goes into the cloth, and it will swell considerably as it boils. Gather the cloth with room to spare, or the rice bursts through and you get orange-flavoured rice soup.
- Pudding clothsUse squares of unbleached calico or close-woven cotton, about 12 inches, scalded in boiling water, wrung out, and dusted on the inside with flour. The flour paste that forms is what seals the parcel. Cotton kitchen string, not synthetic.
- Carolina riceIn this period the term meant a long-grain white rice from the Carolinas. Any ordinary long-grain white rice does the job; avoid parboiled or converted rice, which will not cling around the fruit.
- Choose the oranges carefullyNavel or other seedless dessert oranges, small enough that half a pound of rice divides into four workable coats. Remove all the white pith, as the recipe insists, since long boiling turns it bitter.
- Boiling timeAn hour and a half is generous for rice that has already had five minutes in boiling water. Forty-five minutes to an hour is usually enough for the coating to set firm and the fruit to soften; keep the water at a steady rolling boil and topped up so the dumplings stay submerged.
- Turning outLift each parcel with a slotted spoon, cut the string, and invert onto a warm plate before peeling the cloth back, or the rice tears. Sift icing sugar over them at the table.
- The orange sauceThe recipe calls for one without giving it; presumably it appears elsewhere in the book. A simple version is orange juice and zest warmed with sugar and a little butter, thickened with a teaspoon of cornflour slaked in cold water.
- Yield and costFour dumplings, one per person, as stated. The eightpence is Victorian retail pricing.
Boiled puddings tied in floured cloths were the backbone of British domestic cookery from the seventeenth century onward, and by the Victorian period the technique had been miniaturised into individual dumplings: apple, jam roly-poly, suet balls, and fruit encased in rice or paste. The "snow-ball" name attaches to any of these white-coated spheres, and versions with apple at the centre are far more common in period books than the orange.