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Dessert

Egg Snow

A custard made from milk, sugar, nutmeg, and eggs, topped with whipped egg whites and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Egg Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a pot, combine milk, rose-water, white sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Gradually add beaten egg yolks while stirring continuously.

  3. Cook over low heat until thickened into a smooth custard, then remove from heat and let cool in a deep dish.

Make the snow and serve

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, adding essence of lemon.

  2. Spoon the egg white mixture onto the cooled custard to resemble snow.

  3. Top each mound with a teaspoon of currant jelly.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a smooth custard as they set with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Whip into stiff peaks that form the light, airy snow on top.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the yolks thicken.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard base.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over low heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the heat is too high or the custard is stirred too little, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rose, sugar, nutmeg, egg, lemon. 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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