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Dessert

Snow Pyramid

A light dessert made of beaten egg whites, currant jelly, cream, and fried in lard or beef fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Snow Pyramid

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff foam, then add the currant jelly and whip together again.

Shape and cook

  1. Fill half of each saucer with cream.

  2. Drop a tablespoon of the beaten egg and jelly mixture in the center of each saucer, shaping it like a pyramid.

  3. In a frying pan, heat the lard or beef fat until boiling.

  4. Add the batter by large spoonfuls, ensuring they are not too close together.

  5. Cook until one side is a delicate brown, then turn to cook the other side.

Serve

  1. Remove to a dish lined with a doily and top each with a dessert spoon of firm jelly or jam.

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. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cream + beeftop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Currant + beeftop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 into a stiff foam that gives the pyramids their light, airy structure.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor, and its body helps the whipped whites hold together.
Lard or beef fat
Conducts heat in the frying pan and gives the outside a golden-brown crust.

The step that matters

Cooking the pyramids in the hot fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly, and the pyramids must not be crowded. Crowding lowers the fat temperature and causes the pieces to steam and spread instead of setting.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, beef. 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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