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Dessert

Snow Ball Custard

A custard with beaten egg whites formed into snowball shapes, cooked in hot milk and flavored with vanilla and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Snow Ball Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the snowballs

  1. Heat the milk in a porcelain kettle until hot but not boiling.

  2. Beat the egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff.

  3. Form the beaten egg whites into balls using a tablespoon and dessert spoon.

  4. Gently place the balls into the hot milk and turn them over; they will be done in 1 minute.

  5. Remove the snowballs and place them on a porcelain plate.

Make the custard

  1. Add the remaining sugar to the milk and stir until dissolved.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with a little cold milk and stir them into the milk mixture.

  3. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens, but do not let it boil.

  4. Remove from heat and add the vanilla and cinnamon.

  5. Once slightly cooled, stir in the remaining egg whites.

Serve

  1. Transfer the custard to a glass bowl, place the snowballs on top, and decorate each with a piece of bright colored jelly.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whites whip into airy snowballs, while yolks thicken the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the yolks thicken into custard.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Do not let the custard boil. Egg yolks thicken gently as they heat. If the custard boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

“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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