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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled dessert made from gelatin, lemon, sugar, egg whites, and a boiled custard topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Pour boiling water over the gelatin.

  2. Add lemon juice and sugar.

  3. When nearly cold, strain the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  5. Fold the beaten egg whites into the gelatin mixture.

  6. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  7. Set the mold on ice.

Make and serve the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine egg yolks, milk, sugar, and corn starch to make a boiled custard.

  2. Flavor the custard to taste.

  3. Serve the custard cold around portions of the snow pudding.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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 firm, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lighten the set mixture into a fluffy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens both the pudding and the custard.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding richness and body.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites in while the gelatin is nearly cold. If the gelatine is still too hot, the beaten egg white foam will deflate and the pudding will be dense. If it is too cold, it begins to set in lumps before the foam is evenly folded through, so the texture is uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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