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Dessert

Snow Eggs and Custard

A custard of milk, eggs, vanilla, and powdered sugar, topped with whipped egg whites and sprinkles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Eggs and Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs and set the yolks aside.

  2. Whisk the egg whites to a stiff froth, adding 2 teaspoons of powdered sugar.

  3. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it is nearly boiling.

  4. Sweeten the milk to taste.

  5. Shape the egg whites with two dessert spoons and drop them into the hot milk.

  6. Turn the egg whites over after a few seconds until they are set.

  7. Remove the egg whites and drain them on a sieve.

Make the custard

  1. Strain the milk into a clean saucepan and let it cool.

  2. Gradually mix in the yolks.

  3. Add vanilla or lemon for flavor.

  4. Place the saucepan with the milk and yolks into a larger pot of hot water.

  5. Stir until the custard thickens.

Serve

  1. Once thickened, pour the custard around the piled egg whites.

  2. Sprinkle with Hundreds and Thousands.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Eggs
Whites whip into a stiff foam that poaches into soft islands; yolks thicken the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and the poaching bath for the egg whites.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whipped whites and helps them hold a stable foam.
Vanilla
Adds aroma to the custard.

The step that matters

Turning the egg whites in the hot milk. The milk should be nearly boiling but not at a rolling boil, so the whites set gently and stay tender. If it boils hard, the whites can toughen and break apart.

“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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