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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert with a custard topping, made from gelatin, egg whites, sugar, lemon flavoring, and a milk custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak gelatin in 1 cup of cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Heat gelatin on the stove, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Let the gelatin cool.

  4. Beat the cooled gelatin until frothy.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Combine the gelatin, egg whites, sugar, and lemon flavoring.

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

  4. Set aside to cool and harden.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Make a soft custard with the egg yolks and milk.

  2. Once the pudding is cold, turn it out onto a plate and pour the custard over it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 liquid into a firm, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they add lightness and airy texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a smooth, pourable custard sauce.

The step that matters

Combining the gelatin and egg whites. Gelatin must be cooled before it is beaten and mixed, because warm gelatin can deflate the foam and it sets quickly once chilled. Folding gently keeps the airy texture the egg whites provide.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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