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Dessert

Snow Souffle

A chilled dessert made from beaten egg whites, gelatin, sugar, lemon juice, served with soft custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the snow

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in hot water.

  3. Add sugar and lemon juice to the gelatin mixture and stir until dissolved and cooled.

  4. Fold the beaten egg whites into the gelatin mixture until white and stiff.

Mold and serve

  1. Mold the mixture and serve with soft custard poured around it.

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. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the souffle its light, foamy structure.
Gelatine
Dissolved and set as it cools, it firms the mixture so it holds its molded shape.
Sugar
Dissolves into the gelatin mixture, adding sweetness and body to the set dessert.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and gives a fresh, sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the gelatin mixture. Once the gelatin mixture has cooled but is still liquid, folding gently preserves the air in the whites. Stirring hard or letting the gelatin set first deflates the foam and makes the souffle dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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