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Dessert

Orange Snow

A chilled orange and lemon gelatin dessert made with cornstarch and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze oranges until a cup is two-thirds full.

  2. Add lemon juice and sugar to taste.

Make the custard

  1. Combine the juice mixture with water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in cornstarch that has been moistened with cold water and cook for about 10 minutes.

Fold and mold

  1. Quickly fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Stir over heat for 1-2 minutes, then pour into a wet mold.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavor and aroma of the dessert.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the orange flavor and balances the sugar.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot liquid as its starch granules swell and gelatinize.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they make the dessert light and give it its snowy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.

The step that matters

Quickly fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.. Egg white foam collapses when overmixed or left to stand, so folding in gently and promptly keeps the dessert light. The starch mixture also begins to set as it cools, so the whites should be added while it is still warm and fluid.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

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