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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled custard-like dessert made with corn starch, eggs, milk, sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 pudding

  1. Dissolve the corn starch in a little cold water.

  2. Pour 1 quart of boiling water over the corn starch and stir well.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and mix thoroughly.

  4. Set the mixture in a basin of boiling water or a double boiler and cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Turn the mixture into a mold and refrigerate to harden.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine the egg yolks, milk, sugar, and vanilla in a saucepan and steam until thickened.

  2. Once the pudding is cold, turn it out onto a dish and pour the custard around it 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 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

Eggs
Egg whites set the pudding's airy structure, while yolks thicken the custard sauce.
Corn starch
Starch gels in hot water, thickening the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard sauce, giving it body and a soft, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens both the pudding and the custard sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the pudding over boiling water. The mixture must be held at a steady gentle heat for the full 10 minutes so the starch fully gelatinises and thickens. Too little heat leaves it runny, and overheating can make the egg whites weep or turn rubbery.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, corn, 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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