Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Jelly

A chilled dessert made from isinglass, sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in boiling water and let it cool slightly.

  2. Add the sugar and lemon juice, then beat until very light.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into molds and chill.

  2. Serve with cream or a boiled custard made from the egg yolks.

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

Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the liquid into a jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to lighten the texture and give the jelly its snowy appearance.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the jelly.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff but folded gently, so the air bubbles stay trapped. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a dense rather than light jelly.

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.

More snow jelly recipes

Lemon 4 See all 23 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes