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Dessert

Snow Drifts

A gelatin dessert flavored with lemon, sugar, egg whites, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snow Drifts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin base

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in boiling water.

  2. Mix the lemon juice and sugar together and add the lemon-sugar mixture to the gelatin.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  4. Let it cool but not set completely.

Prepare the egg white topping

  1. Beat the egg whites until sweetened and flavored.

  2. Float the beaten egg whites on boiling milk for about 1 minute.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove the gelatin from the mold and place it in cold water.

  2. Using a fork, break the gelatin into bits without liquefying it.

  3. Add spoonfuls of broken gelatin and egg whites to the mold, filling it with softened gelatin.

  4. Place the mold back to cool.

  5. Serve on a dish surrounded by a custard made from the egg yolks and 1 pint of milk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable dessert structure.
Eggs
Whites are beaten to form a light foam that adds lightness; yolks enrich the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the gelatin.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard that surrounds the dessert, adding richness.

The step that matters

Break the gelatin without liquefying it. Gelatin only holds its set when it is cold. If it warms too much while being broken into bits, it turns liquid and the dessert will not hold its shape when folded with the egg whites.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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