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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with lemon, sugar, egg whites, and optional fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add boiling water and stir until clear.

  3. Mix in lemon juice and sugar, then let cool until slightly thick.

Whip and set

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff froth.

  2. Slowly add the gelatine mixture to the egg whites while beating continuously.

  3. Continue beating until the mixture does not separate.

  4. Set the mixture on ice and serve with whipped cream.

  5. Optionally, press halved peaches or other fruits into the mixture when almost solid.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Peach + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Peach + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 light, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam, they give the pudding its light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Slowly add the gelatine mixture to the egg whites while beating continuously. Gelatine that is too warm or added in a rush can deflate the whipped foam or cause separation. Cooling the mixture until only slightly thick and adding it gradually keeps the foam stable so the pudding stays light and uniform.

Swap the peach

The recipe marks peach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, egg, cream, orange, pineapple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, cream, orange, pineapple. 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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