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
Make the gelatin mixture
Soak the gelatin in cold water for 10 minutes.
Heat the gelatin on the stove, stirring until dissolved.
Let the dissolved gelatin cool.
Beat the cooled gelatin until frothy.
Beat the egg whites until frothy.
Mix the beaten egg whites, sugar, and lemon flavoring with the gelatin.
Mould and set
Wet small cups with water.
Fill the wet cups with the gelatin mixture.
Set the filled cups aside to cool and harden.
Finish with custard
Make a soft custard with the egg yolks.
Pour the custard over the chilled pudding.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 soft, sliceable structure as it cools.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into foam that lightens the pudding's texture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the set pudding.
The step that matters
Cool the dissolved gelatin before folding it into the whites. Gelatin that is still too hot deflates the beaten egg white foam, while gelatin that has begun to set forms stringy clumps. Let it cool until it is just syrupy, then combine.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
- 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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