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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A dessert made by beating egg whites with lemon jelly, molded, chilled, and served with fruit and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the snow

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites to the lemon jelly when it is quite thick.

  3. Beat the mixture with a wire spoon until it holds its shape.

Set and serve

  1. Mold the mixture and place it in a pan of ice water.

  2. Once firm, decorate with fruit and cover the fruit.

  3. Serve with cream or soft custard.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Banana + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air and give the pudding its light, snowy structure.
Lemon jelly
Sets as it cools, giving the beaten whites a firm body that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites to the jelly at the right thickness. If the jelly is too thin, the whites deflate and the mixture will not hold its shape. If it is too set, the whites will not blend in evenly. Beating with a wire spoon until the mixture holds its shape then traps air and sets the foam.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lemon, cream, orange, banana, dates, fig):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, cream, orange, banana, dates, fig. 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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