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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, milk, wine, and egg whites, chilled in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add boiling water to the soaked gelatin and stir until melted.

  3. Mix in lemon juice, sugar, beaten egg whites, milk, and wine.

  4. Beat the mixture for 15 minutes.

Mold and chill

  1. Pour into a mold lined with ladyfingers.

  2. Set the mold on ice to chill.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid mixture into a soft, sliceable structure as it chills.
Eggs
Beaten whites trap air, giving the pudding its light, airy, snowy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the sweetness.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the set pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture for 15 minutes. Gelatin begins to thicken as the mixture cools, so beating must happen while it is still fluid enough to whip. Sustained beating folds air into the mixture, which sets into the light, foamy texture the pudding depends on.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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