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Snowball Fritters

A fried batter made with eggs, sour cream, flour, beer, sugar, salt, cardamom, and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Snowball Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl, remove any specks, and beat well.

  2. Mix in the sour cream and gradually add flour until the batter is thick enough for a fork to stand upright.

  3. Stir in the beer, sugar, salt, and cardamom seeds.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the butter or fat in a sauté pan until boiling.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot fat and fry until lightly set, about 4-5 minutes.

  3. Drain on a sieve lined with blotting paper and serve on a folded napkin.

  4. Sift powdered sugar over the fritters 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.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cardamomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters set and hold their shape when fried.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, giving the batter a tender texture.
Flour
Provides structure, thickening the batter so it holds its shape in the hot fat.
Beer
Adds liquid and carbonation that lighten the batter as it fries.
Butter or fat
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot fat. The fat must be boiling before the batter goes in. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of setting quickly into a crisp, light fritter.

Swap the cardamom

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Cardamomthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour, beer, sugar, butter. 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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