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Dessert

Snow Balls

A meringue dessert made by baking stiff egg whites with icing sugar and cream of tartar, then forming into balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 the meringue

  1. Beat egg whites to stiff froth.

  2. Gradually add icing sugar and cream of tartar while beating.

Shape and bake

  1. Squeeze the mixture through a piping bag onto parchment paper.

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

Assemble

  1. Ice the bottoms of the baked meringues and sandwich two together to form a ball.

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 meringue its airy structure.
Icing sugar
Dissolves into the foam to sweeten it and make it smooth and glossy.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that stabilizes the foam so it holds its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Add the sugar gradually while beating. Sugar added slowly dissolves fully into the egg white foam and strengthens its structure. Adding it all at once or too early can leave the foam weak and prone to collapsing.

“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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