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Dessert

Snow Balls with Almonds

A sweet dessert of almond-flavored dough shaped into balls and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Balls with Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Combine milk, butter, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir in the flour until well mixed.

  4. Blanch the almonds.

  5. Finely grind the almonds.

  6. Mix the ground almonds into the paste.

  7. Beat in the whole eggs and egg yolks until fully incorporated.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into serpentine forms on buttered paper using a spoon.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  3. Serve with sifted sugar sprinkled on top.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Starch that gelatinises with the milk and butter to form a sturdy paste that holds the shape.
Eggs
Add structure as they set in the oven and enrich the dough, helping it bind and brown.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, giving a tender texture and helping the dough bind.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps the dough brown in the oven.
Almonds
Contribute nutty aroma and fat, and add body to the paste.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs until fully incorporated. Eggs must be fully combined into the warm paste so the dough is smooth and evenly bound. Unmixed egg can leave streaks or pockets, causing uneven setting and texture in the baked snowballs.

“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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