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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with sugar, lemon, egg whites, egg yolks, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water.

  2. When nearly cool, add sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold them into the mixture.

  5. Quickly pour the mixture into a mold.

  6. Refrigerate until set.

Make the custard and serve

  1. For the custard, stir corn starch into boiling milk.

  2. Add the egg yolks and sweeten to taste.

  3. Serve with the pudding.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 firm, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the pudding with trapped air for a soft, airy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard, adding richness and helping it thicken when gently heated.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites in gently. Stiff whites hold air that gives the pudding its light texture. Overmixing or folding after the gelatine has set too far can deflate them, leaving a dense result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, corn, 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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