Mrs Wigley’s 1877 Recipe for ‘Apple Snowballs’

(1.) Boil 1 pint of milk, add a tea-cupful of rice; boil for half an hour.
(2.) Peel 6 large apples, and take out the cores without dividing them.
(3.) Put into each apple a clove and as much sugar as it will hold.
(4.) Cover the outside of each apple with a good coating of the boiled rice, and tie each one up in a cloth that has been dipped in hot water.
(5.) Boil till the apples are ready ; half an hour is generally enough.
(6.) Take up the snowballs carefully ; arrange them on a dish, and powder with a little sugar.

S. S. Wigley, Cookery and Home Comforts (1877)

‘Tis the Season! Which is why I’m posting a short series of suitably festive historical recipes with a fruity theme, in case you fancy making something a little different for your Christmas table this year. So far we’ve had ‘Apple Ginger‘ and ‘Stuffed Apples to Serve With a Roast‘ from Gertrude Mackay, and ‘Apple Snow‘ from Nellie Willey.

This recipe from 1877, published in Mrs (S.S.) Wigley’s Cookery and Home Comforts, sounds like a visually impressive and fun alternative to Christmas pudding, if the latter isn’t your kinda thing¹I’ll spare you a repeat of my thoughts on the wonderfulness of Christmas pud. You’re welcome.

Mind you, they do sound rather fiddly to make to me. Wrapping half a dozen sugar-stuffed apples in sticky rice pudding, and then boiling them in pudding cloths, seems like the sort of overly-ambitious project that’s more likely to end in a panful of rice soup with apples bobbing around in it, at least if I made the attempt. But the more adventurous of you might feel up to the challenge..?

Or perhaps you could invert the process, by coring the apples and filling them with the rice mixture rather than sugar, before baking them in the traditional way? That might be a pleasant variant, and much easier to manage. But of course, you’d lose the ‘snowball’ effect, which is the whole point of the recipe; that visual impression and the delight of cutting into one with your spoon to reveal the fruity interior. (You’ll note I continue to say “you”, rather than “I”…)

So, how about it? Do you feel brave enough to accept the ‘Apple Snowball’ challenge? Or does it all sound like a rice-and-apple disaster waiting to happen? Please do let me know what you think, via the comments. And if you do make a successful go of it then I’d love to see a few photos of the finished dish.

Footnotes

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  I’ll spare you a repeat of my thoughts on the wonderfulness of Christmas pud. You’re welcome. ↩︎