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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert flavored with lemon, sweetened with sugar, and topped with a boiled custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Add lemon juice and pour in boiling water, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Add sugar and let it cool until it begins to thicken.

Whip and make the custard

  1. Beat in the egg whites for 5 minutes until stiff.

  2. For the sauce, combine the egg yolk, milk, and sugar in a saucepan to make a boiled custard.

  3. Flavor the custard with lemon essence.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 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. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 lemon liquid into a soft, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they add lightness and airy volume to the pudding.
Egg yolk
Thickens the milk into a custard when gently cooked, adding richness.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard sauce, adding creaminess and body.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pudding its bright lemon flavor.

The step that matters

Let the gelatine mixture cool until it begins to thicken. If it sets fully before the egg whites are folded in, the mixture will not blend evenly and the pudding loses its light texture. Stop cooling when it thickens but still pours.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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