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Dessert

Snow Balls

A sweet dessert of steamed egg-based balls rolled in powdered sugar and served with strawberry cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Snow Balls

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs and add the powdered sugar; beat until light.

  2. Mix in the water, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites, then gently mix in the flour and baking powder.

Steam and serve

  1. Carefully pour the mixture into buttered cups and steam for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove from cups, roll in powdered sugar, and serve with strawberry cream.

  3. To make the cream, whip the pint of cream until stiff, then sprinkle in 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar and fold in the strawberry jam that has been rubbed through a sieve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Yolks sweeten and enrich the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the light batter together once steamed.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the snowballs rise and stay airy.
Cream
Whipped until stiff, it forms the rich, airy topping served with the snowballs.
Strawberry jam
Adds fruit flavour and sweetness to the whipped cream.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites, which is what makes the batter light. Stirring vigorously would deflate it and leave the steamed snowballs dense.

Swap the strawberry jam

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Strawberry jamthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, lemon, cream. 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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