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Snowballs Boiled in Butter

A batter of eggs, sour cream, flour, sugar, cardamom, and beer is dropped into boiling butter and served warm.

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 until well combined.

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

  3. Sweeten the mixture with brown sugar and add crushed cardamom.

  4. Stir in the beer and mix well.

Fry and serve

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

  2. Drain the cooked snowballs on a towel before serving.

  3. Serve warm in a napkin, dusted with sugar.

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 add structure and richness as they set in the hot fat.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tang and tenderness to the batter.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape when dropped into the fat.
Beer
Adds liquid and carbonation that help lighten the batter as it fries.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel note, and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling lard or butter. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the batter soaks up fat and turns greasy and dense instead of puffing into a crisp, golden ball.

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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