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Dessert

Snow Balls

A sweet dessert made from beaten egg whites, sugar, flour, baked, then iced and rolled in coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Snow Balls

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Snow Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make and bake the cakes

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Mix in the sugar and flour carefully.

  3. Drop spoonfuls onto paper to form cakes.

  4. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C).

Assemble and finish

  1. Once baked, stick two cakes together with icing to form a ball.

  2. Ice the balls with fondant icing and roll them in coconut.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + coconuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + coconuttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the cakes their airy structure and lift.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Flour
Provides structure that sets the cakes as they bake.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg whites so the foam holds its volume.

The step that matters

Mix in the sugar and flour carefully. The air trapped in the beaten egg whites is what lifts the cakes. Folding gently keeps that foam intact, while vigorous stirring deflates it and leaves dense, flat cakes.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, cream, 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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