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Dessert

Snow Balls

A custard dessert made with milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Snow Balls

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Separate 5 eggs, beat the whites to stiff peaks.

  2. In a bowl, combine the yolks of the 5 separated eggs with the other 5 whole eggs.

  3. Add white sugar to sweeten the mixture.

Poach the meringue

  1. Heat 2 quarts of milk in a pot until it boils.

  2. Carefully place the beaten egg whites on the boiling milk and let it boil for 1 minute.

  3. Skim the egg whites into a dish.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the remaining eggs with sugar until well combined.

  2. Flavor the mixture with vanilla and stir it into the scalding milk until it thickens.

  3. Pour the custard through a sieve into a pan.

Serve

  1. Cut the egg whites into small squares and place them on top of the custard.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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 hold their shape when whipped, and yolks thicken the custard as they set with heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gently poaches the meringue.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolk mixture into the hot milk. Adding hot milk too quickly or without stirring can scramble the egg yolks. Stirring steadily while adding the mixture gently raises its temperature, so the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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