Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatinous dessert made from corn starch, sugar, milk, and eggs, served with a vanilla or lemon flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix corn starch, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Gradually add cold water until the mixture can pour easily.

  2. Add the mixture to boiling water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Fold in beaten egg whites and lemon juice.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold. Chill thoroughly.

Make the custard sauce

  1. Scald milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix sugar, corn starch, and salt. Beat egg yolks, add ¼ cup milk, and combine with the dry ingredients.

  3. Pour the mixture into the scalded milk. Cook for 6 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Strain the sauce. Cool. Flavor with vanilla or lemon extract.

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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Egg whites
Whipped into the pudding to give it an airy, light, foamy structure.
Corn starch
Thickens the pudding and the sauce as it heats, giving body to both.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard sauce as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet pudding and balances its flavor.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard sauce, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Cook the custard sauce with constant stirring. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they overheat or cook unevenly. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the starch thickens smoothly and the yolks set into a silky sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More snow pudding recipes

Egg 5Sauce 3 See all 260 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes