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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with sugar, lemon juice, egg whites, and water, chilled until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the snow

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in hot water and mix with cold water and sugar.

  2. Add lemon juice and stir until thickened like jelly.

  3. Beat the mixture with a whisk until frothy.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites until well combined.

Set and serve

  1. Mold the mixture or heap it on a flat dish.

  2. Chill in the refrigerator until set and serve with Soft Custard.

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. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Sugar and lemon 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

Granulated gelatin
Sets the liquid mixture into a soft, jelly-like structure that holds its shape.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam and folded in to make the pudding light and airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and sharpens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Egg white foam holds air only if it is stiff and handled gently. Vigorous stirring deflates it, leaving a dense rather than snowy texture. The gelatin must also be thickened but not fully set, or the whites will not blend in evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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