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Dessert

Snow Cream

A dessert of beaten egg whites, powdered sugar, lemon flavoring, rose water, and thick cream served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Snow Cream

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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Add the powdered sugar, lemon flavoring, and rose water; mix well.

  3. Gently fold in the thick cream.

  4. Serve over plain boiled rice.

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. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Whipped into stiff peaks to give the dish its light, airy structure.
Thick cream
Folded in to add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the whipped base.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whites, adding sweetness and helping stabilize the foam.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the thick cream. Stirring vigorously knocks air out of the whipped egg whites, causing the mixture to deflate and lose its light, fluffy texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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