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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert flavored with lemon and vanilla, sweetened with sugar and folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for several hours.

  2. Pour boiling water over the soaked gelatin, add sugar, and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add lemon juice and strain the mixture into a tin basin.

Chill and whip

  1. Place the basin in a pan of ice water and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, beat the mixture with an egg beater until fluffy.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the pudding.

Mold and set

  1. Dip a fancy mold in cold water, pour the pudding into it, and refrigerate for 4 hours.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid mixture into a light, wobbly structure as it cools.
Eggs
Egg whites beaten to stiff peaks add air and a light, fluffy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the sweetness.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the body of the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooling before whipping. The mixture must be cool and just beginning to thicken before beating; if it is still warm, the foam will collapse, and if it has set too firm, it will not fluff evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, sugar, egg, milk, vanilla. 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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