Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Balls

A steamed sweet cake made from butter, sugar, egg whites, flour, baking powder, and milk, rolled in powdered sugar and served with creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Snow Balls

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the baking powder with the sifted flour.

  4. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  5. Fill cups half full with the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Roll the steamed balls in powdered sugar before serving with creamy sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the batter a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the batter set and hold its shape when steamed.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the snowballs rise and turn light.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the batter cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a soft, smooth batter.

The step that matters

Steam for 20 to 30 minutes. Steam keeps the batter moist while the baking powder raises it and the starch sets. Undercooking leaves the centre gummy, while overcooking dries the snowballs out.

“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 snowballs recipes

Rice 51Apple 25Orange 16Almond 7 See all 17 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes