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Dessert

Orange Snow

A gelatin dessert made with orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, egg whites, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup cold water until soft.

  2. Add 1 pint boiling water and stir until the gelatine is dissolved.

  3. Set aside in a cool place until it begins to thicken.

Make the snow

  1. Beat in the strained juice of 6 oranges, juice of 1 lemon, and 2 cups sugar.

  2. Beat the whites of 3 eggs until stiff, then fold them into the mixture.

  3. Beat the whole mixture until it looks white and sponge-like.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and set on ice to harden.

  2. Serve with whipped cream.

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

Gelatine
Sets the juice into a firm, wobbly structure once it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they make the mixture light and sponge-like.
Orange juice
Provides the main flavour and acidity of the dessert.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps stabilise the whipped texture.

The step that matters

Beat the whites until stiff, then fold them in. Whites that are not beaten stiff will not trap air, so the mixture stays dense instead of light. Folding gently keeps the foam from deflating.

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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