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Dessert

Nut Snow

A chilled almond dessert made with boiling water, sugar, butter, vanilla, cornstarch, egg whites, and chopped almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Nut Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Put boiling water in a glass pan on the stove.

  2. Beat the egg whites and set aside.

  3. Add sugar, butter, vanilla, and cornstarch dissolved in a little cold water to the boiling water.

  4. Add the egg whites and cook for four minutes.

  5. Stir in the chopped almonds.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with whipped cream or 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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Egg whites
Whipped into the mixture to give it a light, airy, foamy structure as it cooks.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling liquid so the mixture sets into a soft, spoonable texture.
Almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour to the soft, set mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and helps give it body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites and cooking for four minutes. Egg whites set when heated, so they need to be cooked long enough to firm up into a stable foam. Stirring in the cornstarch mixture first keeps the cornstarch from clumping as it thickens.

“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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