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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with lemon, sugar, egg whites, and custard, chilled and served in molds.

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. Dissolve the gelatin in hot water.

  2. Add lemon juice and sugar; mix well and strain through a flannel into a large mixing bowl.

  3. When cool enough to thicken, stir in the beaten egg whites and beat until thick and snow-white.

  4. Turn into molds dipped in cold water or pile in a pyramid in a glass dish, leaving space around it.

  5. Keep on ice until the next day.

Make the custard

  1. Make a soft custard by heating milk with egg yolks, salt, sugar, and grated lemon rind until thick.

  2. Chill the custard and pour it around the pudding before serving.

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. Egg + lemontop 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 lemon liquid into a soft, firm pudding that holds its shape.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the pudding its light, airy, snowy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard that adds richness to the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until thick and snow-white, after the mixture has cooled enough to thicken. Egg whites whip into a stable foam only when clean and fully beaten. If the gelatin mixture is still too warm, it can deflate the foam and the pudding will be dense instead of light.

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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