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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert with a lemon custard sauce.

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 gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add boiling water to the soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  3. Set aside to cool.

Whip and combine

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Mix the beaten egg whites with lemon juice and sugar.

  3. Combine the gelatine mixture with the egg white mixture.

  4. Let the mixture stand until it forms a stiff jelly.

Make the custard

  1. Combine the egg yolks with boiling milk.

  2. Sweeten and flavor to taste.

  3. Cook until it thickens into a 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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 into a stiff jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the pudding its light, airy foam.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk custard as they cook, giving it richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. If overheated, they can curdle or scramble, so the custard should be cooked slowly and stirred while it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe 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.

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