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Dessert

Snow Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 20 minutes.

  2. Pour boiling water over the soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add sugar and lemon juice to the gelatine mixture and let it cool.

Set and fold

  1. Once cool, cut the gelatine into bits.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the gelatine mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, heat milk in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the egg yolks and vanilla until thickened.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add airy lightness to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce and gives it a creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the warm milk into a smooth, custard-like sauce.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the gelatine mixture. Stiff egg white foam holds the air that makes the pudding light. Stirring vigorously or folding too long deflates it, so the pudding turns dense instead of fluffy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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