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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A light pudding made with corn starch, egg whites, yolks, sugar, milk, butter, and flavored to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starch base

  1. Dissolve corn starch in a little cold water.

  2. Pour boiling water over the corn starch while stirring continuously.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Season and steam

  1. Add a little salt and flavor to taste before steaming.

  2. Steam for 10 minutes.

Make the custard sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine egg yolks, sugar, milk, and butter.

  2. Boil the mixture and add flavoring.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the boiling water into a soft, sliceable pudding body as it gelatinizes.
Egg whites
Whipped foam gives the pudding its light, airy, snowy texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and balances the mild starchy flavor.
Milk
Adds liquid and dairy richness to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth mouthfeel and a rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water over the corn starch while stirring continuously. Starch clumps if it hits hot liquid unstirred. Constant stirring disperses the granules so they swell evenly, giving a smooth, lump-free base before the egg whites are folded in.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, sugar, milk, butter. 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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