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Dessert

Crawfordsville Snow Pudding

A gelatin-based lemon pudding made with Cooper's gelatine, sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Crawfordsville Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Break the gelatine into fine bits.

  2. Pour 2½ cups of water over the gelatine and let it stand until dissolved.

  3. Add 2 cups of sugar and the juice of 2 lemons.

  4. Strain the mixture and set it in a cool place until it begins to jelly.

Set the pudding

  1. Add the well-beaten egg whites and stir well.

  2. Turn the mixture into a mold.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a light, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into the partly set mixture to add airy lightness and a foamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor that cuts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the egg whites when the mixture only begins to jelly. If the gelatine has set too firmly, the beaten whites cannot blend in evenly and the pudding turns lumpy. If it is still fully liquid, the whites deflate and the pudding stays runny and does not hold its snowy, airy texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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