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Dessert

Snow Pie

A chilled dessert made with a cornstarch custard, coconut, and whipped egg whites, served in pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Snow Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix cornstarch with cold water in a bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture over boiling water and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Add sugar and coconut, then let it cool.

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the cooled mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the filling into baked pie crusts.

  2. Top with nuts and 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Coconut + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Coconut + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Nuts + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water into a set, sliceable filling as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the filling and give it an airy, fluffy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance its starchy body.
Coconut
Adds flavour and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the cooled mixture. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks and folded gently into a cooled filling. If the filling is still hot, the whites can deflate and the pie loses its airy texture.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Macadamia nutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coconut, egg, cream. 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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