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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with fruit juice, sugar, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine according to package directions.

  2. Add boiling water, tart fruit juice, and sugar. Stir until dissolved.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Let the mixture cool in a cold place for several hours.

Add the egg whites and set

  1. When the mixture begins to set, beat the egg whites with salt or lemon juice and sugar until stiff.

  2. Fold the beaten egg whites into the gelatine mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into molds.

  4. Chill the molds on ice.

  5. Serve with whipped cream or custard sauce.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 soft, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they make the pudding light and airy when folded in.
Tart fruit juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the juice.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be folded in while the gelatine is only partly set, so the foam holds. If the gelatine is too firm, the whites will not blend evenly; if too liquid, the foam will collapse and the pudding will lose its lightness.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream. 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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