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Dessert

Annie's Snowballs

A gelatin dessert formed into snowball shapes and coated with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Annie's Snowballs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water.

  2. Add cold water and sugar, then flavor with lemon or vanilla.

Whip and mold

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add the well-beaten egg whites.

  2. Beat hard until thick like whipped cream.

  3. Pour into sherbet cups to mold.

Serve

  1. Once cold, turn out onto a large dish and pour custard around them.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, molded shape that holds its form when turned out.
Egg whites
Beaten into foam, they lighten the mixture and give it a fluffy, snowball-like texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and adds body to the set gelatin.
Lemon juice or vanilla
Adds flavor and aroma to the mixture.

The step that matters

Beat hard until thick like whipped cream. Egg whites need enough beating to trap air and form a stable foam. Under-beaten whites stay runny and will not give the light, fluffy texture. Adding them only after the mixture has cooled keeps the gelatin from deflating the foam as it begins to set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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