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Snow Custard

A chilled gelatin custard made with lemon juice, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Snow Custard

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Snow Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak gelatin in cold water.

  2. Add sugar and boiling water; strain through a cloth.

  3. When cold, beat egg whites until stiff and mix into the gelatin.

  4. Let it rise to the top and place in a cool area to harden.

Serve

  1. Make custard with egg yolks and flavor with vanilla.

  2. Pour custard around the hardened jelly in serving dishes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they lighten the jelly and add a foamy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard that is poured around the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites into the gelatin. The gelatin must be cold but still liquid and not yet setting when the stiff whites are folded in. If it is too warm the whites deflate; if it has already set, they will not blend in evenly and the foam will not hold.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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