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Apple Snow Balls
1 1/2 cups rice 3 1/2 quarts water 3 1/2 teaspoons salt 6 to 8 apples 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon Cook the rice in boiling salted water, and drain and dry. Wash, core and pare the apples. Wring out small pudding cloths, or squares of cheese cloth, in hot water. Spread the rice one-third inch over the cloth, place apples in the center, with one teaspoon of sugar mixed with one-sixth teaspoon of cinnamon in the center. Draw up the cloth around the fruit until it is covered with rice. Tie in the apples being careful not to have the rice and cloth in folds, and steam until fruit is tender--one-half to three-quarters of an hour. Serve with lemon sauce or cream.
A cloth-tied steamed pudding with a whole apple at its heart, from an era when rice stood in for wheat flour. The technique is simple but unforgiving in one respect: the rice jacket has to hold together.
- Choose rice that clingsMedium- or short-grain rice works best here; long-grain, cooked in 3 1/2 quarts of water and dried, is less likely to hold together and the coating may slough off in the steamer. Cook it until just tender, not soft, since it steams for another half hour.
- "Drain and dry"Spread the drained rice on a tray for a few minutes to let surface water evaporate. Wet rice slides off the apple; bone-dry rice will not adhere at all. It should be tacky.
- Cloths and their substitutesDoubled cheesecloth squares of about 10 inches are the practical modern version of a pudding cloth. Wring them out in hot water as directed, which keeps the rice from gripping the fabric, and tie with kitchen twine rather than knotting the cloth itself.
- ApplesUse a firm cooking apple that holds shape under steam, roughly 6 to 8 oz each. Pared and cored whole, a large apple may need the full three-quarters of an hour; small ones will be tender in 30 minutes.
- The sugar arithmeticThe list gives 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon, which works out to 6 teaspoons of sugar and 6 sixths of cinnamon: enough for six apples, not eight. Scale up if you fill the larger number.
- Steaming setupA steamer basket or a rack in a covered stockpot over simmering water is what is meant. Keep the balls above the waterline, leave space between them, and top up the water so the pot does not boil dry.
- Lemon saucePeriod lemon sauces of this type are usually cornstarch-thickened: roughly a cup of water, half a cup of sugar, a tablespoon of cornstarch, cooked until clear, then finished off the heat with the juice of a lemon, its zest, and a lump of butter. Cream, poured cold, is the simpler option the recipe allows.
- YieldSix to eight servings, one apple each, best served warm within a few minutes of unwrapping.
Boiled and steamed puddings tied in cloth are a British inheritance, and apple dumplings baked in a pastry crust were standard American household cooking through the nineteenth century. Swapping a rice jacket for the pastry is the tell here: during the First World War conservation campaigns, American households were urged to save wheat, meat, fats and sugar for export to the Allies, and rice, cornmeal, oats and barley were promoted as substitutes. The name is descriptive rather than old — a white, rounded, snow-like ball.