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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, milk custard, and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in a little cold water, then pour over 1½ pints of boiling water and stir until melted.

  2. Add ½ pound of sugar and the juice of 2 lemons, then pour into a 2-quart glass dish and refrigerate overnight.

Make the custard

  1. Boil 1½ pints of milk.

  2. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of cornstarch in a little cold milk and add it to the boiling milk with a little salt.

  3. Beat 1 egg and the yolks of 4 eggs with 3 tablespoons of sugar, then add to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and flavor with vanilla, then cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks with a little powdered sugar just before serving.

  2. Once the jelly is set, pour the custard over it and top with the beaten egg whites.

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 lemon liquid into a firm jelly base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a smooth custard and add richness.
Egg whites
Whip into a light, airy foam that forms the snowy topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk so the custard holds its body when cooled.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, providing creaminess and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet jelly.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff and held just before serving, because they lose air and collapse if they stand too long or are underbeaten. Keeping any fat or yolk out of the whites helps them whip to full volume.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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