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Dessert

Egg Snow

Egg Snow is a dessert made by dropping beaten egg whites into boiling milk, then topping with custard and sugarplums.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Egg Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the froth

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the milk until it boils.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the egg froth onto the boiling milk.

  4. Cook each spoonful for a few seconds, then turn them over to cook the other side.

  5. Place the cooked froth in a glass dish.

Make the custard

  1. Strain the milk to remove any egg bits.

  2. Make a custard with the strained milk and the egg yolks, flavoring as desired.

  3. Once the custard is cold, pour it gently into the glass dish over the froth.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle nonpareil sugarplums over the top and serve.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they form the light, airy froth that floats on the milk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard and poaches the froth.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Cooking the froth on the boiling milk. Each spoonful needs only a few seconds per side. Overcooking makes the meringue tough and rubbery, while undercooking leaves it raw and wet inside.

“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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