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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with gelatine, sugar, lemon juice, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water.

  2. When nearly cool, add sugar and lemon juice; strain the mixture.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Quickly pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, stir cornstarch into boiling milk.

  2. Add the egg yolks and sweeten to taste; serve with the pudding.

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. Sugar + lemontop 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).

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

Gelatine
Sets the dissolved liquid into a firm, wobbly structure once chilled.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add airy lightness to the set dessert.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard with richness and body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the lemon's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the dessert.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites in while the mixture is only nearly cool. If the gelatine mixture is still too warm, it deflates the whipped egg whites and the foam collapses. If it is already close to setting, the whites will not blend evenly and the texture becomes lumpy. Folding gently at the right point keeps the dessert light.

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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