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Dessert

Snow Pudding

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

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 jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 20 minutes.

  2. Add boiling water, lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar to the gelatine. Stir the mixture and strain it.

  3. Place the mixture on ice until it begins to harden.

  4. Beat the egg whites to a froth and fold them into the gelatine mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it set until firm.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, heat the milk.

  2. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar into the hot milk.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg whites while the custard is still hot.

  4. Flavor with vanilla.

  5. Pour the custard around the jelly.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 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

Gelatine
Sets the lemon mixture into a firm, wobbly jelly.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they add airy lightness to the jelly and custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the hot milk into a smooth, rich custard.
Lemons
Provide acidity and fragrant citrus flavour to the jelly.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, giving it body and creaminess.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten egg whites into the custard while it is still hot. Hot custard is fluid enough to blend the whites evenly and keeps them from deflating quickly. If the custard cools too far, the whites can separate or form lumps, and the sauce loses its smooth texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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