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Dessert

Eggs in Snow

A French dessert of poached egg whites in sweetened cream, topped with thickened yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Eggs in Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Reduce the cream or milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt, sugar, lemon zest, and orange-flower water.

  3. Dilute the egg yolks with a little cooled cream and thicken over low heat, stirring constantly.

  4. Pass the sauce through a sieve and serve over the poached egg whites.

Poach the whites

  1. Whip the egg whites with salt and sugar until stiff.

  2. Spoon the egg whites into the cream and poach them, turning to cook evenly.

  3. Remove the poached whites and arrange them like poached eggs.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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
Whipped to stiff foam, then poached, giving the light, airy "snow" texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce through gentle heat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and the poaching liquid.
Sugar
Sweetens the whites and the sauce, and helps stabilise the whipped foam.

The step that matters

Thickening the yolks over low heat. Egg yolks set at around 70°C and curdle if overheated. Stirring constantly over low heat spreads the heat evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of scrambling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, lemon, 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.

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