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Dessert

Snow Cream

A chilled dessert made with sponge cake, sweet wine, egg whites, powdered sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Snow Cream

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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Place thin slices of sponge cake in the bottom of a dish.

  2. Pour enough sweet wine to soak the cake.

Make the topping

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add powdered sugar and sweet wine to the egg whites and mix well.

  3. Fold in the cream gently.

  4. Pour the mixture over the soaked cake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Sponge cake
Forms the soaked base layer that absorbs the wine and holds the topping.
Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they trap air and give the topping its light, airy structure.
Cream
Folded in gently to add richness and a softer, creamy texture to the topping.
Sweet wine
Soaks the cake and adds moisture and sweetness to the dish.

The step that matters

Fold in the cream gently. Folding keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense topping instead of a light, airy one.

“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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