Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Cream

A chilled dessert made from sweet cream, cornstarch, egg whites, and flavoring.

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

Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream base

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

  2. Blend the cornstarch flour with some cold cream and stir it quickly into the boiling cream.

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

Finish and serve

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

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

  3. Spoon the mixture into rocky heaps on silver or glass dishes, or in shapes.

  4. Chill before serving; it can be made a day in advance.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Thick sweet cream
Provides the rich, fatty base that gives the snow cream its body and smooth mouthfeel.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling cream so it holds its shape when spooned into heaps.
Egg whites
Beaten in at the end to add lightness and an airy, foamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Egg whites are added quickly and the mixture should not boil up more than once afterward. Repeated boiling can toughen and deflate the delicate foam and cause the egg to scramble, so the whites stay light and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes