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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with egg whites, custard, lemon extract, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin base

  1. Soak the gelatin in 1 pint of cold water.

  2. Heat the gelatin on the stove until dissolved, then add 1 pint of boiling water and let it cool.

  3. Just before the mixture hardens, beat in the egg whites, 1 cup of sugar, and a little lemon extract.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, cook 1 pint of milk with the egg yolks and ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla to the custard.

Mould and serve

  1. Mould the gelatin and pour the custard over it when ready to serve.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 firm, wobbly structure that holds the moulded shape.
Egg whites
Beaten in to add lightness and a foamy, airy texture to the set mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a smooth custard and add richness.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding creaminess and body.
Sugar
Sweetens both the gelatin mixture and the custard.

The step that matters

Beating in the egg whites just before the mixture hardens. If the gelatin has already set too firmly, the whites cannot be folded in evenly, leaving lumps and a dense texture. If it is still too runny, the foam collapses and the mixture loses its light, snowy texture. Timing is what makes the pudding airy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, vanilla. 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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