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Dessert

Snow Balls with Custard

A dessert of beaten egg white snowballs simmered in flavored milk, served with a thickened custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Snow Balls with Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs and milk

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. Beat the egg whites until firm, then add 2 teaspoons of powdered sugar.

  3. In a saucepan, heat the milk with 20 drops of orange flower water and 2 teaspoons of powdered sugar until boiling.

Make the snowballs

  1. Form balls with the egg white mixture using a tablespoon and simmer them in the boiling milk for 4 minutes.

  2. Drain the snowballs on a fine sieve and cool them.

Make the custard and serve

  1. For the custard, beat the egg yolks and stir them into the milk over low heat until thickened like cream.

  2. Strain the custard and let it cool completely.

  3. Place the snowballs in a glass dish and pour the custard over them 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.

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 + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Whites whip into a firm foam that holds the snowballs; yolks thicken the custard.
Milk
Forms the custard base and poaching liquid, carrying the flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whites and milk, and dissolves easily into the foam and custard.
Orange flower water
Adds a floral aroma to the milk and custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard over low heat. Egg yolks thicken gently as they warm; too much heat can scramble them into lumps. Cooking slowly and stirring keeps the custard smooth and creamy.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk. 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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