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Dessert

Snow Balls

A small dough ball made from eggs, flour, water, butter, and salt, baked or fried and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Snow Balls

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Place the eggs in warm water.

  2. Mix the flour with warm water, salt, and melted butter.

  3. Stir over heat until the mixture does not stick to the saucepan.

  4. Let it cool, then mix with the eggs.

  5. Beat the dough for about 10 minutes.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape balls using 2 tablespoons.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven or fry in hot, deep fat.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle with sugar and serve for afternoon tea or supper.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that gives the dough its body.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring over heat until the mixture does not stick to the saucepan. Cooking the flour paste drives off surplus moisture and gelatinizes the starch, so the dough can be firm enough to hold its shape. If it is underdone, the dough stays wet and sticky and may not hold its shape or cook through when baked or fried.

“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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