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Dessert

Eggs, Snow

A dessert of poached egg whites served with a sweetened milk custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Eggs, Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the poached whites

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Sweeten to taste with sugar. Add vanilla.

  3. Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Drop 1 tablespoon at a time into the boiling milk. Poach until firm, turning 2 or 3 times.

  5. Drain each poached egg white. Place in a glass dish.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks. Add them to the milk.

  2. Strain into a jug. Stand the jug in a saucepan of boiling water.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens. Let the custard cool, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Pour it over the poached egg whites. 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. 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. Egg + milktop 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).

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

Eggs
Whites set into light, airy puffs; yolks thicken the milk into custard.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard and the liquid the whites poach in.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over boiling water until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if they get too hot they can curdle and turn grainy. Gentle, constant stirring over simmering water keeps the custard smooth.

“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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