Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Eggs

A dessert made from beaten egg whites, powdered sugar, milk, and flavored with orange flower water or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Snow Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add powdered sugar and flavor with orange flower water or vanilla.

Poach the whites

  1. Boil the milk with a little sugar and the chosen flavoring.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the egg whites into the milk.

  3. Let the egg whites drip on a strainer.

Make the custard

  1. Take half of the milk and mix it with the beaten egg yolks, starting with a little milk.

  2. Cook the mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon, and remove from heat when the whites begin to set.

Serve

  1. Place the cooked mixture in a dish.

  2. Carefully pour the remaining cream 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. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Whites trap air to form the light foam; yolks thicken the custard as they cook.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whites and helps them hold their stiff foam.
Milk
Forms the custard base and the warm liquid the egg whites are poached in.

The step that matters

Cook the custard gently and stop at the right moment. Egg yolks thicken with gentle heat but can curdle or scramble if overheated, so stirring steadily and removing the pan as it begins to set keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes