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Dessert

Snow Custard

A chilled gelatin custard made with egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and gelatin, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Snow Custard

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Soak the gelatine in 1 cup of cold water.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water and stir until thoroughly dissolved.

  3. Mix in the sugar and lemon juice, then strain into a large dish and set aside to cool.

  4. When it begins to congeal, fold in the beaten egg whites and beat until spongy.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 into a wobbly, firm structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the set dessert a light, spongy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and adds body to the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites when the mixture begins to congeal. If the mixture is still fully liquid, the egg whites will deflate and sink. If it has set firm, they will not blend in evenly. Folding at the point of partial setting lets the foam hold and suspend evenly throughout the dessert.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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