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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with boiling water, gelatin, sugar, lemon juice, egg whites, milk, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in a little cold water.

  2. Pour boiling water over the soaked gelatine.

  3. Add sugar and lemon juice.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Let it cool.

Whip and mold

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Combine the stiff egg whites with the gelatine mixture.

  3. Beat the mixture for 20 minutes until fluffy.

  4. Mold the mixture.

  5. Set aside.

Make the custard

  1. Combine boiling milk, sugar, and egg yolks.

  2. Flavor the custard to taste.

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. Sugar + lemontop 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).

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 into foam, they give the pudding its light, airy, fluffy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk and sugar into a custard when gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture for 20 minutes until fluffy. Whipping traps air in the egg white foam, which gives the snow its light texture. Combining the foam with gelatine mixture that is too warm or too set can deflate it or make it lumpy, so it should be cool and syrupy before folding in.

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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