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Dessert

Snow Eggs, or Cubfs a LA Neigs

A custard dessert made with milk, sugar, vanilla or citrus, and stiff‑whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Snow Eggs, or Cubfs a LA Neigs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Combine milk, sugar, and lemon rind in a saucepan.

  2. Let the mixture steep beside the fire for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the lemon peel.

  4. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  5. Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

Poach the egg whites

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Drop the egg whites into the boiling milk tablespoonfuls, turning them until cooked.

  3. Place the cooked egg whites on a glass dish.

Finish the custard and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks.

  2. Stir the beaten yolks into the milk.

  3. Add more sugar to taste.

  4. Strain the mixture into a jug.

  5. Place the jug in a saucepan of boiling water.

  6. Stir the mixture until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  7. Pour the custard over the egg whites, allowing them to rise to the surface.

  8. Chill before serving.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Whites whip into a stiff foam that gives the snow eggs their light structure; yolks thicken the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and the poaching liquid for the egg whites.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and custard.

The step that matters

Stir the custard until it thickens, but do not let it boil. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but past a certain temperature they scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy custard. Gentle, constant stirring over indirect heat keeps it smooth.

“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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