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Dessert

Snow-drift Pudding

A chilled lemon gelatin pudding made with sugar, gelatin, egg whites, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snow-drift Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin base

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in the water, then add the sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Boil the mixture for about 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture and let it cool until it begins to thicken.

Finish and set

  1. Add the beaten egg whites and whisk until very light and spongy.

  2. Pile the mixture in a glass dish and set it in a very cold place until used.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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 liquid into a soft, wobbly structure as it cools.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides sharp acidity and bright lemon flavour.
Egg whites
Whisked in to trap air, giving the pudding a light, spongy texture.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg whites into the cooled mixture. The mixture must be thick enough to hold air but not fully set. If it is too warm, the whites collapse and lose volume; if it has set too firmly, they will not blend smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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