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Dessert

Snowball Pudding

A steamed pudding made with egg yolks, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, and folded egg whites, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Snowball Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Gradually add the granulated sugar and continue beating until light.

  3. Mix in the milk, flour, and baking powder.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Fold the egg whites gently into the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease cups or molds and fill them two-thirds full with the batter.

  2. Steam for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with lemon sauce, foamy sauce, or any fruit 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens and helps the pudding rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and structure as they bind the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks whip to a light, stable foam.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites. Stirring rather than folding knocks out the air whipped into the egg whites. Gentle folding keeps the foam intact, so the steamed pudding stays light instead of dense.

“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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