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Dessert

Snow Balls

A steamed cake made with egg yolks, sugar, lemon, flour, and butter, served with a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Snow Balls

Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs with 1 cup of granulated sugar until very light.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of cold water, grated rind of 1 lemon, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and 1 small cup of flour mixed with 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered cups and steam for 45 minutes.

  2. For the sauce, cream together ¼ cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar.

  3. Add ½ cup of cream and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, then cook over hot water until creamy.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and give it rise as it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the steamed snowballs together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the puddings rise and stay light.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the sauce turn creamy and smooth.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only if folded in gently. Vigorous stirring knocks out the air, so the steamed puddings turn dense instead of light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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