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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with lemon, sugar, eggs, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add sugar and grated lemons to the soaked gelatin.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and stir until dissolved.

Whip and combine

  1. Beat the mixture until it sparkles.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Make a custard with the egg yolks.

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. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

Eggs
Whites whip into a foam that lightens the pudding; yolks thicken the custard.
Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a tender, sliceable structure once it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the lemon's tartness.
Lemons
Grated lemon adds aroma and bright acidity.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatin fully. Gelatin must dissolve completely in the hot liquid. Undissolved granules leave specks and uneven patches, and the pudding may not set evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, egg, sugar. 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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