Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Custard

A custard made with milk, cream, sugar, cinnamon, egg yolks, and folded with stiff egg whites, served with ratafia cakes and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Snow Custard

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, cream, sugar, and cinnamon in a pot. Heat until it begins to boil.

  2. Beat egg yolks with a few spoonfuls of cold milk in a bowl. Pour into the boiling mixture while stirring constantly.

  3. Continue stirring until it boils again, then remove the cinnamon.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff. Fold them into the mixture while stirring quickly to prevent overflow.

  2. When the custard thickens, pour it into a dish garnished with alternating layers of ratafia cakes and pastry.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 yolks
Thicken the custard as they set when heated, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add airy lightness to the custard as it is folded in.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, velvety texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps balance the richness of the dairy and eggs.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the boiling mixture. Egg yolks scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Tempering them with a little cold milk first and pouring while stirring constantly keeps the custard smooth and thickening evenly.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

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

More snow custard recipes

Apple 3 See all 32 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes