Skip to main content
Dessert

Snowball Cakes with Sauce

A steamed cake made from sugar, milk, butter, flour, baking powder, raisins, and egg whites, served hot with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snowball Cakes with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sugar, milk, butter, baking powder, raisins (if using), flour, and beaten egg whites.

  2. Grease cups and fill them with the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the cups in a steamer over boiling water and steam for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with sauce.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  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

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cakes lift and a light, spongy texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise in the steamer.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that set the cake as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to a tender crumb and browning.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Steam over boiling water. The steamer must stay at a steady boil so the cakes cook through evenly. If the water drops too low, the cakes may turn out dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes