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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with sugar, eggs, milk, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 snow

  1. Soak ½ package of gelatin in 1 cup of cold water for ½ hour.

  2. Add 1½ cups of hot water and 1 cup of sugar to the gelatin.

  3. Beat the whites of 3 eggs.

  4. Fold the beaten whites into the gelatin mixture.

  5. Keep the mixture cool.

  6. Flavor the mixture with lemon.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs with ½ cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cornstarch.

  2. Scald 1 pint of milk.

  3. Gradually add the scalded milk to the egg mixture until it thickens.

  4. Add salt and Virot's Vanilla.

  5. Let the sauce cool.

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. Lemon + milktop 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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid mixture into a light, wobbly structure as it chills.
Egg whites
Beaten into foam, they give the pudding its light, airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard sauce as they heat with the milk.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard sauce, adding richness and body.
Cornstarch
Helps thicken the custard sauce and stabilise the yolks against curdling.
Sugar
Sweetens the snow and the sauce and helps stabilise the beaten whites.

The step that matters

Gradually add the scalded milk to the egg mixture until it thickens. Adding hot milk too quickly can scramble the egg yolks. Adding it slowly while stirring tempers the yolks so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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