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Dessert

Snowballs Boiled in Butter

A batter of eggs, sour cream, flour, sugar, cardamom, and beer is boiled in butter and served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Snowballs Boiled in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs and sour cream.

  2. Gradually add flour until the batter is thick enough for a spoon to stand in it.

  3. Sweeten with brown sugar and add cardamom pods.

  4. Stir in the beer and mix well.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling lard or butter.

  2. Drain on a towel and serve in a napkin with sifted sugar 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cardamomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Bind the batter and set into a tender, custardy interior when fried.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tang and tenderness to the batter.
Flour
Thickens the batter so each spoonful holds its shape in the hot fat.
Beer
Thins the batter and adds lift from its carbonation as the pancakes fry.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the fat.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into fat that is already boiling. Hot fat sets the outside of each spoonful quickly, so it holds its round shape and absorbs less grease. If the fat is too cool, the batter spreads and soaks up oil, leaving pancakes heavy and greasy.

Swap the cardamom

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, flour, sugar, beer, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Cardamomthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour, sugar, beer, butter. 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.

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