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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled pudding made from corn starch, eggs, milk, sugar, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Dissolve corn starch in a little cold water. Stir into boiling water or milk.

  2. Add beaten egg whites, salt, and sugar. Beat well.

  3. Pour into a mold and cool.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat milk. Whisk in egg yolks and corn starch. Add sugar. Flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  2. Pour over the pudding when cold.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a set, smooth pudding as it cooks.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness when beaten into the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it thicken smoothly with richness.
Milk
Provides moisture and creamy body to the pudding and sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the starch and milk.

The step that matters

Stir the dissolved corn starch into boiling liquid. Starch must be fully suspended in cold water before it meets boiling liquid, or it clumps. Once it hits the heat it gelatinises and thickens, so the liquid should be kept moving while it sets.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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