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Dessert

Lemon Snow Pudding

A chilled lemon-flavored custard made with milk, corn flour, sugar, egg whites, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Lemon Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. Stir in 2 tablespoons of corn flour and ½ cup of sugar.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir until nearly cool.

  6. Add the juice of 3 lemons and 5 beaten egg whites.

  7. Mix until cool.

  8. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  9. Refrigerate until set.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil ½ pint of milk for the sauce.

  2. Beat the yolks of 5 eggs with a little sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Return to the saucepan.

  5. Boil briefly.

  6. Cool on ice.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Corn flour
Thickens the pudding as it cooks, giving it a set, spoonable body.
Egg whites
Set into the lemon base when cooled, giving the pudding its light, firm structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat, giving it a smooth, pourable body.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Milk
Provides the liquid base for both the pudding and the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the egg yolk mixture into the boiling milk. Egg yolks can scramble if they hit very hot milk too fast or boil too long. Adding them gradually to the hot milk and boiling only briefly keeps the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, flour, sugar, egg, sauce. 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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