Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Snow

A chilled lemon-flavored dessert made with syrup, cornstarch, egg white, and lemon juice.

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

Lemon Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine water, sugar, and lemon rind in a saucepan to make a syrup.

  2. Cook the syrup for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove the lemon rind from the syrup.

Thicken and flavour

  1. Mix cornstarch with cold water.

  2. Add the cornstarch mixture to the syrup.

  3. Cook until the raw starch taste is gone.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat.

  5. Add strained lemon juice.

Fold, mold and chill

  1. Fold in the beaten egg white until combined.

  2. Mold the mixture.

  3. Chill before serving.

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

Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon syrup into a soft, set mixture as it cooks.
Egg white
Its beaten foam lightens the mixture and gives the snowy, airy texture.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the flavour of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the tartness of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Cooking until the raw starch taste is gone. Cornstarch must be heated fully to swell and thicken properly. Undercooked starch leaves a raw, floury taste, so the mixture should be cooked until that taste disappears before the heat is removed.

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 lemon snow recipes

Jelly 4 See all 18 →

You might also like

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