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Dessert

Snow Cream

A frozen dessert made from sweet cream, corn starch, egg whites, sugar, and flavoring.

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

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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until it is ready to boil.

  2. Quickly stir in the corn-starch blended with some cold cream.

  3. Sweeten to taste and allow to boil gently for 2-3 minutes while stirring.

  4. Add the beaten egg whites and do not let it boil more than once after adding the eggs.

  5. Flavor with your choice of lemon, vanilla, bitter almond, or grated lemon peel.

Shape and serve

  1. Quickly shape the mixture into rocky heaps on silver or glass dishes or in molds.

  2. Chill before serving.

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body to the mixture.
Corn-starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the mixture structure so it holds its shape.
Egg whites
Whipped into the hot mixture to lighten its texture and give the snow-like airy look.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and adds to its body as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Egg whites set when heated and can curdle or turn grainy if overheated, so they should be added off the heat or gently, and the mixture should not be boiled again after they go in.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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