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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with lemon, sugar, eggs, and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 pudding

  1. Dissolve gelatine in hot water.

  2. Add lemon juice and sugar. Mix well.

  3. Strain through a flannel into a large mixing bowl.

  4. When cool enough to thicken, stir in beaten egg whites until thick and snow white.

  5. Turn into molds dipped in cold water or pile in a glass dish, leaving space around.

  6. Refrigerate until the next day.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, combine milk, egg yolks, salt, sugar, and grated lemon rind in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring until thickened, then cool completely.

Serve

  1. If the pudding is in a pyramid shape, pour the custard around it.

  2. If in a mold, serve custard from a pitcher.

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. Egg + lemontop 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 strained liquid into a firm, sliceable structure as it chills.
Egg whites
Beaten into the mixture to create a light, airy, foamy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard as they cook gently with the milk.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and custard and balances the lemon's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg whites when the mixture is only cool enough to thicken. If the gelatine mixture is still too warm, the whites deflate and the pudding loses its light texture. If it has already set, the whites will not blend in evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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