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Dessert

Snow Eggs

A poached egg custard made with egg whites, milk, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Snow Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the poached eggs

  1. Whip the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Gently mix in the sugar.

  3. Bring the milk to a boil in a flat saucepan.

  4. Form egg-shaped pieces of the mixture with a tablespoon and drop them into the boiling milk to poach.

  5. Once set, remove them with a slotted spoon and drain on a sieve.

Make the custard and serve

  1. In another saucepan, beat the egg yolks with a little sugar and orange-flower water.

  2. Add the reduced milk to the yolk mixture and stir over low heat until thickened, but do not boil.

  3. Pass the custard through a fine sieve, then serve the poached eggs on a dish and pour the custard over them.

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 + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 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).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 whites
Whipped to a stiff foam that holds together and sets when poached in hot milk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they gently set over low heat, giving it body and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and custard and helps stabilise the whipped whites.
Milk
Forms the poaching liquid and the base of the custard, carrying flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but above about 80°C they curdle and turn grainy. Keeping the heat low and never boiling lets the custard thicken smoothly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk. 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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