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Dessert

Snow Ball Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, flour, sugar, egg whites, milk, baking powder, rolled in powdered sugar and shredded coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Snow Ball Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the sugar to the creamed butter.

  3. Mix the baking powder with the flour and add it alternately with the milk.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill cups half full with the mixture.

  2. Steam for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from cups.

  4. Roll in powdered sugar and shredded coconut 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the pudding a tender, rich body.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Eggs whites
Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and help the pudding rise and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, lifting the batter so it becomes light and spongy.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderise the crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air bubbles that give lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a dense pudding instead of a light one.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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