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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A lemon gelatin dessert made with egg whites, yolks, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin base

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in boiling water and let it cool slightly.

  2. Beat the gelatin mixture with the egg whites for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the sugar and lemon juice, mixing well.

Add the custard

  1. Prepare a custard with the egg yolks and pour it over the mixture.

  2. Stir in the grated lemon rinds into the custard.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a soft, sliceable structure once cooled.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they add lightness and airy texture to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Beat the gelatin mixture with the egg whites for 30 minutes. The gelatin must be cool but still liquid when beaten with the egg whites. If it is too hot, the whites can deflate; if it has set, it will not blend into a light foam. Beating also traps air, which gives the pudding its airy texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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