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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with milk, eggs, sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla.

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 custard

  1. Heat 1 quart of milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Beat 5 egg yolks in a bowl, then pour the hot milk over them, stirring well.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly before adding vanilla.

Make the gelatine

  1. Soak 1 box of gelatine in 1 pint of cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add 1½ pounds of sugar, juice of 5 lemons, and 1 quart of boiling water to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Stir until dissolved and strain through a jelly bag.

  4. Reserve 1 pint of the gelatine mixture and place the rest on ice to freeze.

Make the snow and set the mold

  1. Beat 5 egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually beat in ½ cup of powdered sugar and the reserved pint of gelatine mixture (make sure it's cool).

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  4. Set the mold in a cool place to stiffen.

Serve

  1. Turn the mold onto a shallow glass dish.

  2. Cut the jelly into triangular pieces and arrange around the pudding.

  3. Pour the custard over both.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and colour.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the snow its light, airy structure.
Gelatine
Sets the lemon mixture into a firm jelly that holds its shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Gradually beat in the gelatine mixture while it is cool. If the gelatine is still warm, it can deflate the whipped egg whites and prevent the foam from holding. Cooling it to a syrupy stage lets it fold in while the foam stays stiff.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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