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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with egg whites, yolks, sugar, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in 2 cups of cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Heat the gelatin on the stove, stirring until dissolved, then let it cool.

  3. Beat the cooled gelatin until frothy.

Make the pudding

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Mix the beaten egg whites, sugar, and lemon flavoring with the gelatin.

  3. Wet small cups with water and fill them with the mixture.

  4. Set the cups aside to cool and harden.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Make a soft custard with the egg yolks.

  2. Pour the custard over the pudding when 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. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Sugar and lemon 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

Gelatin
Sets the mixture into a soft, firm, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Beaten to a foam, they give the pudding its light, airy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the egg whites and gelatin.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the serving sauce.

The step that matters

Dissolve and cool the gelatin before mixing. Gelatin that is not fully dissolved leaves grainy specks in the pudding. Gelatin that is still hot can deflate the beaten egg whites, so cooling it first keeps the foam light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, egg, sugar. 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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