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Dessert

Snow Cream

A chilled dessert made from cream, egg whites, sugar, wine, and flavored with lemon peel or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Snow Cream

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Boil the cream with the lemon peel or cinnamon.

Combine and chill

  1. Beat the egg whites with the sugar until well combined.

  2. Mix the egg white mixture with the cream and whisk until nearly cold.

  3. Add the wine and continue to whisk until completely cold.

  4. Serve in a cut-glass dish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Cream
Forms the rich base that gives the dessert its body and smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar and folded into the cream to add lightness and airy structure.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.
Lisbon or mountain wine
Adds acidity and flavour, and its liquid thins the mixture as it chills.

The step that matters

Whisking the cream until nearly cold, then until completely cold. Whisking while the mixture cools keeps the egg whites from setting into lumps and helps trap air, so the snow stays light and smooth rather than dense or curdled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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