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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with lemon, sugar, egg yolks, custard, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in ½ cup of cold water and add 1 cup of boiling water.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of sugar and ¼ cup of lemon juice.

  3. Strain into a large bowl and place in ice water to cool, stirring occasionally.

Whip and set

  1. Beat the egg whites until light and fold them into the thickening jelly.

  2. Beat until smooth and nearly hard.

  3. Pour into a mold or glass dish.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Make a soft custard with the remaining ingredients.

  2. Serve the custard cold 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 soft, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to lighten the jelly and give it an airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard and add richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the lemon juice's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor to the jelly.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding creaminess and body.

The step that matters

Beat until smooth and nearly hard. The jelly must be cold and just thickened before the egg whites are folded in. If it sets fully, it cannot be beaten smooth and the foam will collapse or separate.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, sugar, egg, milk, vanilla. 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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