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Dessert

Snow Souffle

A light dessert made from beaten egg whites, gelatin, sugar, lemon juice, and 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: Gelatin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Snow Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the snow mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in a little more than 1 pint of hot water.

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

  4. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the cooled mixture until well combined.

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. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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 soufflé its light, airy structure.
Gelatin
Sets the liquid mixture so it holds its molded shape when chilled.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the cooled mixture. Stiff whites hold air that gives the dish its lightness. Vigorous stirring deflates that foam, while gentle folding keeps it. The mixture must be cooled first, because warm liquid would melt and collapse the whites.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, gelatin, 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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