Skip to main content
Main

Snowballs in Tomatoes

A dish of tomatoes stuffed with forcemeat and coated with egg white snowballs, baked and served with a red puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Snowballs in Tomatoes

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 snowballs

  1. Boil the milk with a pinch of salt.

  2. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the egg mixture into the boiling milk and cook for a few moments.

  4. Carefully lift out the snowballs and let them drain.

Stuff and bake the tomatoes

  1. Remove the core and a small portion of the inside from each tomato.

  2. Fill the tomatoes with forcemeat or sausage meat.

  3. Place the stuffed tomatoes in a buttered baking dish and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10-15 minutes without allowing the tomatoes to collapse.

Serve

  1. Serve the snowballs on a red puree with a sprig of parsley in the center.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the snowballs their light, airy structure.
Milk
Poaching liquid that gently cooks the egg foam and adds a mild, creamy flavour.
Tomatoes
Hollow shells that hold the filling and soften as they bake, adding moisture and acidity.
Forcemeat or sausage meat
Savoury filling that cooks through inside the tomatoes and adds richness.
Bread crumbs
Topping that helps form a golden, lightly crisp crust over the baked tomatoes.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10-15 minutes without allowing the tomatoes to collapse.. Tomatoes are mostly water and soften quickly under heat. Overbaking breaks down their walls and releases juice, so they lose their shape and the filling spills out.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, meat, butter, bread, pepper, parsley):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, meat, butter, bread, pepper, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Meatless Tomato SoupMeatless Tomato Soup23 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes