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Dessert

Snow Cream

A chilled sweetened cream dessert thickened with corn starch and folded egg whites.

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

Why it works: Corn and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,165 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

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

  2. Blend the corn-starch 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.

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

Flavor and serve

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 richness and body, forming the base of the dessert.
Corn-starch flour
Thickens the boiling cream so the mixture holds its shape when chilled.
Egg whites
Beaten into the hot mixture to add lightness and a foamy, airy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Egg whites can curdle or turn grainy and lose their airy texture if the mixture boils again after they are added, so keep it below a boil once they go in.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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