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Dessert

Snow, Ice and Thaw

A gelatin dessert topped with a frothy egg white foam and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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, Ice and Thaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add boiling water and stir until dissolved.

  3. Mix in lemon juice and sugar.

  4. Once cold, add beaten egg whites and beat for 30 minutes until frothy.

  5. Pour into molds and refrigerate overnight.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, combine egg yolks, whole egg, sugar, and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring until thickened.

Assemble and top

  1. Turn the gelatine into a glass dish.

  2. Pour the custard over the gelatine.

  3. Top with beaten egg whites mixed with fine sugar.

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the water and juice mixture into a firm, wobbly jelly.
Egg whites
Beaten into foam, they lighten the jelly and give the topping its airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk custard as they cook and add richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly, custard and topping, and helps the egg whites hold their foam.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over low heat. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but too much heat can scramble them into lumps. Low heat and constant stirring keep the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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