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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and flavored cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the set base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Once the gelatine is dissolved, pour in boiling water and stir in sugar and lemon juice.

Whip and set

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Beat the mixture until it begins to thicken.

  3. Pour into a bowl and refrigerate until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweetened cream flavored with wine and nutmeg.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 light, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the pudding its light, airy, snowy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until it begins to thicken. Whipping while the gelatine is only partly set traps air in the liquid. If it is beaten too long after it thickens, or is not yet cool, the foam may collapse or set unevenly, losing the light texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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