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Dessert

Lemon Snow

A lemon-flavored dessert made by thickening sugar, cornstarch, and water, then folding in lemon juice and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon custard base

  1. Mix sugar and cornstarch thoroughly.

  2. Slowly add boiling water while stirring constantly.

  3. Cook in a double boiler for 30 minutes.

  4. Add lemon juice and pour slowly over the beaten egg white.

Set and serve

  1. When thick, pour into a mold to harden.

  2. Serve with vanilla-flavored custard.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and helps balance the tartness of the lemon juice.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot liquid into a smooth, set mixture as it cooks.
Egg white
Beaten into foam, it gives the dessert its light, snowy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the dessert.

The step that matters

Pouring the lemon mixture over the beaten egg white. Pouring slowly and gently helps keep the egg white foam from deflating, which keeps the dessert light instead of dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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