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Dessert

Snowball Pudding

A steamed custard dessert made with eggs, sugar, milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 yolks of the eggs until light.

  2. Gradually beat in the sugar until fluffy.

  3. Add the milk, flour, and baking powder; mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill well-buttered cups or molds two-thirds full.

  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

Eggs
Whipped yolks and stiff whites give the pudding its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Beaten with the yolks until fluffy, adding sweetness and helping build a light texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that set the pudding as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and stay tender.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it fills the cups evenly.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lightens the batter. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in so the pudding rises instead of turning 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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