Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with milk custard, egg yolks, gelatin, lemon juice, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the egg yolks well in a bowl.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the egg yolks, stir, and return to the saucepan.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil again.

  5. Let the custard cool slightly, then add vanilla and set aside in a cool place.

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Combine the soaked gelatin, sugar, lemon juice, and boiling water in a large bowl.

  3. Stir until dissolved and strain through a jelly bag.

  4. Reserve 1 pint of the gelatin mixture and place the rest on ice to freeze.

Build and serve the pudding

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and the reserved gelatin mixture (make sure it's cool).

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and set in a cool place to stiffen.

  4. Turn the mold onto a shallow glass dish, cut the jelly into triangular pieces, and arrange around the pudding.

  5. Pour the custard over both.

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. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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 yolks
Thicken the custard as they set on gentle heating, and add richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Gelatine
Sets the lemon mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the pudding a light, airy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet jelly and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps the lemon flavor come through.

The step that matters

Cool the gelatin mixture before folding it into the whites. Warm gelatin can melt the foam and deflate the whipped egg whites, while cooled gelatin thickens slightly and keeps the foam light and stable.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, 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 gelatin pudding recipes

Lemon 16Fruit 9Chocolate 5Milk 3Pineapple 3 See all 48 →

You might also like

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