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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin-based dessert with a lemon custard topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add sugar to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Mix the softened gelatine with boiling water and lemon juice.

Whip and set

  1. Beat the egg whites until light and frothy.

  2. Pour the mixture into a glass dish.

  3. Let the mixture set.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Mix the boiled milk with egg yolks, sugar, and lemon rind.

  3. Serve the snow pudding with 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a wobbly, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air, giving the pudding its light, snowy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding creaminess and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens both the set pudding and the custard.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until light and frothy. Egg whites trap air when whipped to a foam, which gives the pudding its light texture. Any trace of yolk or grease in the bowl or whites can stop them from foaming properly, so the bowl and whites should be clean and fat-free.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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