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Snow Balls

Snow Balls are fried dough balls rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Snow Balls

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 ↓

Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oil for frying.

  2. In a bowl, mix flour and sugar.

  3. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  4. Add milk, eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda; mix until smooth.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and lightly sift flour over it.

  2. Fold the dough over and cut out shapes using a wine glass.

  3. Fry the cutouts until golden brown.

  4. Roll the fried balls in pulverized sugar before serving.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once combined with the wet ingredients.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and carries flavour.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough, reacting with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the dough.

The step that matters

Fry the cutouts until golden brown. Frying at the right temperature cooks the dough through while browning the surface. Oil that is too cool lets the dough soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre sets.

“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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