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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, eggs, milk, wine, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add boiling water to the soaked gelatine and stir until melted.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix in lemon juice, sugar, beaten egg whites, milk, and wine.

  2. Beat the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour into a mold lined with ladyfingers.

  4. Set the mold on ice until firm.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Beaten into foam, they lighten the pudding and give it a airy, snowy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the sweetness.
Milk
Adds richness and moisture, softening the set texture of the gelatine.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture for 15 minutes. Whipping the egg whites into the gelatine mixture traps air in bubbles that must set in place. Beating too little leaves the pudding dense, and beating after it begins to thicken can break up the foam.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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