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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled dessert made from boiling water, lemon juice, sugar, corn starch, egg whites, milk, egg yolks, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon snow

  1. In a double boiler, combine boiling water, lemon juice, and sugar.

  2. Mix corn starch with cold water.

  3. Add the corn starch mixture to the boiling mixture and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

  5. Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture after removing it from heat.

  6. Pour the mixture into molds and let cool.

Make the custard

  1. Beat egg yolks and sugar together.

  2. Stir in milk.

  3. Cook the custard in a double boiler until thickened, stirring constantly.

  4. Season the custard with lemon or vanilla.

  5. Serve the custard cold.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to give the snow its light, airy, foamy structure.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling lemon liquid so the mixture sets into a soft, sliceable body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk custard as they cook, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Lemon juice
Adds tart acidity that balances the sugar in the snow.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the mixture. Fold gently off the heat so the foam keeps its air. Stirring hard or adding whites to a hot mixture can deflate them and make the pudding dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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