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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with sugar, lemon, egg whites, milk, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add the sugar to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Once soft, stir in boiling water, lemon juice, and beaten egg whites.

  4. Beat the mixture until very light.

  5. Pour the mixture into a glass dish.

Make the custard and finish

  1. Boil milk with egg yolks and grated lemon rind to make custard.

  2. Pour the custard over the pudding.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 mixture so the snow holds its airy shape when chilled.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the pudding its light, airy, snowy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard when gently heated.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding richness and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture until very light. Egg white foam traps air and sets the pudding's texture. Under-beating leaves it dense, and over-beating can make it grainy or collapse before the gelatine sets.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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