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Dessert

Lemon Sponge or Snow Pudding

A lemon gelatin dessert made with gelatine, sugar, egg whites, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemon Sponge or Snow Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water, then add the grated rind and juice of the lemons and sugar.

  3. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Set and whip

  1. Strain the mixture and let it stand in a cool place until nearly set.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and beat the mixture until light and spongy.

Serve

  1. Pour into a glass dish or mold and serve with a thin custard made from the egg yolks, or cream and sugar.

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. Egg + lemontop 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a wobbly, firm structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Beaten in, they trap air to make the pudding light and spongy.
Sugar
Sweetens the lemon mixture and balances its acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity and bright lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture nearly set before adding the egg whites. Egg whites beaten into warm, runny gelatine collapse and deflate. Chilling until partly thickened gives the foam enough body to hold its air while the gelatine sets.

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.

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