Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Balls

A steamed dessert made from sugar, flour, sweet milk, baking powder, eggs, and lemon flavor, rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Snow Balls

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, sweet milk, baking powder, and eggs until smooth.

  2. Add lemon flavor and stir well.

Steam and roll

  1. Pour 1 tablespoon of the mixture into each cup.

  2. Steam for 20 minutes.

  3. Roll the hot snow balls in powdered sugar before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets into the soft body of each snow ball.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, lifting the batter so it rises and stays light.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture so the batter mixes smooth and the crumb stays soft.

The step that matters

Roll the hot snow balls in powdered sugar before serving.. Powdered sugar sticks best to a warm, slightly moist surface, which softens and clings to it. Once the snow balls cool and dry, the sugar tends to fall off.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, 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.

More snow balls recipes

Rice 17 See all 31 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes