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Dessert

Eggs, Snow

A dessert of poached egg whites in sweetened vanilla milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Eggs, Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Flavour the milk

  1. Boil the milk and sweeten it to taste with sugar.

  2. Add vanilla extract to the milk.

Poach and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Drop 1 tablespoon of the egg whites into the boiling milk.

  3. Poach until firm, turning 2 or 3 times.

  4. Drain the egg whites.

  5. Place them in a glass dish.

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

Egg whites
Whisked into a foam that holds its shape, then sets to a firm, tender texture when poached.
Milk
Provides the poaching liquid and the soft, creamy base the poached whites sit in.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk, balancing its flavour.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma to the warm milk.

The step that matters

Poach the whites gently in the milk. Egg white proteins set when heated, so they firm up in the hot milk, but a violent boil can tear the delicate foam apart and make the whites ragged. Turning them gently keeps them intact and evenly firm.

“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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