Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Snow

A chilled lemon-flavored dessert made with lemon juice, boiling water, corn starch, sugar, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon base

  1. Add the juice of 2 lemons to 1 pint of boiling water in a pot.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of corn starch with 1¼ cups of sugar. Add the corn starch and sugar mixture to the pot.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Cook the strained mixture until thick.

Whip and set

  1. When partly cooled, beat the mixture vigorously with a wire whisk or spoon. Add the beaten whites of 3 eggs.

  2. Whip the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Pour the mixture into a chilled, wet mold.

  4. Refrigerate until firm and cold.

Serve

  1. Turn out the dessert.

  2. Serve with cold boiled custard, jelly, or cream and sugar.

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. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Corn starch
Thickens the lemon liquid into a stable, sliceable body when cooked.
Egg whites
Whipped into the mixture to add lightness and a foamy, snowy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and helps give it a smooth, set texture.
Lemon juice
Adds tart acidity that balances the sweetness of the dessert.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture while partly cooled. Beating while the mixture is still warm but no longer hot lets the whites fold in and form a light foam; if it is too hot the egg whites can cook and deflate, and if it is too cold the mixture will not whip up well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, egg. 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.

More lemon snow recipes

Jelly 4 See all 18 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes