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Dessert

Snow Eggs

Snow Eggs are boiled eggs with whipped egg whites, served in custard cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Snow Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter the inside of custard cups for each egg you wish to serve.

  2. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  3. Beat the egg whites with a little salt until stiff.

Shape and poach

  1. Spoon the beaten egg whites into the buttered cups and make a hole in the center for the yolk.

  2. Carefully place the unbroken yolk into the hole in each cup.

  3. Place the cups in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water comes halfway up the sides of the cups.

  4. Cook until the egg whites are set firmly.

Serve

  1. Invert a warm plate over each cup and turn out the egg.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley if desired and serve immediately.

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites whip into a stiff foam that sets to hold the shape, while the yolk stays rich and runny.
Butter
Greasing the cups keeps the set whites from sticking so the eggs turn out whole.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Stiff whites trap air in a stable foam that holds its shape and sets firmly when heated. Under-beaten whites are runny and will spread or collapse in the water bath.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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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