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Dessert

Gelatine Snow

A chilled gelatin dessert flavored with lemon and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gelatine Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Dissolve gelatine in 1 pint of cold water on the back of the stove.

  2. Add sugar to the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Pour 1 pint of warm water over the mixture and beat well.

  4. Strain the juice of 2 lemons into the gelatine mixture.

Finish and decorate

  1. Beat the whites of 2 eggs until stiff.

  2. When the mixture is nearly cold, pour the beaten egg whites on top.

  3. Arrange the yolks around the dish for decoration.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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 liquid into a light, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the dessert its airy, snowy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the sweetness.
Egg yolks
Used for decoration around the dish, not as a structural part of the set.

The step that matters

Pouring the beaten egg whites onto the mixture. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff, and the mixture should be nearly cold before they are added. If the gelatine is still warm, the foam can deflate or sink instead of staying light on top as the base sets.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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