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Dessert

Snow Drifts

A gelatin dessert made with lemon, sugar, egg whites, and milk, set in a mold and served with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Drifts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water.

  2. Mix the lemon juice and sugar together and add the mixture to the gelatine.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  4. Let it cool but not cold.

Prepare the egg whites

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Sweeten and flavor the egg whites.

  3. Float the egg whites on boiling milk for about 1 minute.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove the gelatine from the mold.

  2. Place the gelatine in cold water.

  3. Using a fork, break the firm gelatine into bits without liquefying it.

  4. Add spoonfuls of the broken gelatine and the egg whites back into the mold.

  5. Fill the mold with the softened gelatine.

  6. Place the mold to cool.

  7. Serve on a dish surrounded by custard made from the egg yolks and 1 pint of milk.

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 liquid into a firm, wobbly structure that can be broken into bits.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they add a light, airy texture to the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the lemon mixture and the beaten egg whites.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet gelatine flavor.
Milk
Used to float the egg whites and to make the custard served alongside.

The step that matters

Breaking the firm gelatine without liquefying it. Gelatine softens and melts when warm, so it must stay cold enough to hold its set while it is broken into bits. If it warms too much, it loses its structure and the dessert turns runny instead of holding its airy layers.

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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