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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with gelatine, egg whites, egg yolks, sugar, and lemon flavoring.

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Heat the gelatine on the stove, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Beat the cooled gelatine until frothy.

Make the pudding

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Mix the frothy gelatine, egg whites, sugar, and lemon flavoring together.

  3. Wet small cups with water and fill them with the mixture.

  4. Set the cups aside to cool and harden.

Finish and serve

  1. Make a soft custard with the egg yolks.

  2. Once the pudding is cold, turn it out onto a plate 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. 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Beaten until frothy, they add lightness and airy volume to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and adds body to the mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soft custard that accompanies the pudding, adding richness.

The step that matters

Cooling the gelatine before beating. Gelatine must be dissolved and cooled slightly before it is beaten into the egg whites. If it is still hot, it can deflate the foam and it may not set properly.

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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