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Dessert

Cake with Snow Eggs and Custard

A sponge cake topped with cold custard, snow eggs, fruit jelly, and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cake with Snow Eggs and Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. To make the custard, combine milk, cornstarch, sugar, egg yolks, and salt in a saucepan. Cook until thickened.

Make the snow eggs

  1. For the snow eggs, beat egg whites until foamy, gradually add 4 tablespoons of sugar, and beat until light and dry.

  2. Shape the mixture using 2 tablespoons, wet in boiling water, and poach for about 10 minutes in water just off the boil.

  3. Remove with a skimmer and drain before using.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut sponge cake into slices and place in glass serving dishes.

  2. Pour cold boiled custard over the cake, flavored to taste.

  3. Set a snow egg on top of each slice of cake.

  4. Arrange a few bits of fruit jelly around the eggs on the cake.

  5. Sprinkle with chopped pistachio nuts.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Nuts + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Pistachio + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and a smooth texture when cooked.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that holds its shape to form the light snow eggs.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets as it cooks.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard so it holds its body when cooled.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Poaching the snow eggs. Poach gently in water just off the boil so the meringue cooks through and stays tender. Boiling vigorously can break up the shapes and toughen the surface.

Swap the pistachio

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

  1. Pistachiothe original
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Peanutfits about as well

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