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Dessert

Snow Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 snow

  1. Pour 1 cup of cold water over ½ package of gelatine and add 1½ cups of sugar.

  2. When the gelatine is soft, add 1 cup of boiling water and the juice of 1 lemon.

  3. Beat in the whites of 4 eggs until the mixture is white and frothy.

  4. Pour into a glass dish and let it stand until the gelatine does not settle.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, boil 1 pint of milk with the yolks of 4 eggs, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and the grated rind of 1 lemon.

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 liquid so the beaten mixture holds its light, airy shape.
Egg whites
Whip into foam that gives the pudding its light, fluffy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as they gently heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the custard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet flavour.

The step that matters

Let the gelatine stand until it does not settle. Gelatine must begin to set before it is final, so the foam stays suspended rather than sinking. Standing until it firms keeps the light layers even.

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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