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Dessert

Snow Balls with Almonds

A sweet pastry made from milk, butter, flour, eggs, and almonds, baked into small balls and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Balls with Almonds

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. In a saucepan, combine milk, butter, and sugar, then bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in flour until well mixed.

  3. Blanch and finely chop the almonds, then add to the mixture.

  4. Beat in the whole eggs and egg yolks until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture onto buttered paper in a serpentine shape.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  3. Serve with sifted sugar sprinkled 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness, helping it set and brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
Milk
Supplies moisture that turns the flour mixture into a workable dough.
Almonds
Add nutty aroma and a little texture to the dough.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs until well combined. Eggs must be fully incorporated into the warm flour mixture so the dough becomes smooth and evenly bound. Adding them too quickly or while the mixture is too hot can scramble them or leave lumps, so the batter sets unevenly in the oven.

“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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