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Dessert

Snow Cream

Snow Cream is a chilled dessert made from sweet cream, corn‑starch, egg whites, and flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Snow Cream

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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

Make the custard base

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until it is ready to boil.

  2. Blend the corn-starch flour with some cold cream and stir it quickly into the boiling cream.

  3. Sweeten to taste and allow to boil gently for 2–3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the beaten egg whites and do not let it boil up more than once after adding the eggs.

Flavor, shape and chill

  1. Flavor with lemon, vanilla, bitter almond, or grated lemon peel.

  2. Spoon the mixture into rocky heaps on silver or glass dishes, or into shapes.

  3. Chill before serving; it can be made a day in advance.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Thick sweet cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the dessert a smooth, creamy body.
Corn-starch flour
Thickens the cream as it boils, giving the mixture body and a soft set.
Egg whites
Beaten into the hot mixture to add airy, light structure and a foamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Egg whites set and can curdle or toughen if overheated or boiled hard, so the mixture should not boil up again after the eggs go in.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, corn, flour, 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.

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