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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from milk, corn starch, egg whites, yolks, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Dissolve corn starch in a little milk.

  2. Stir sugar into the remaining milk and heat on the stove.

  3. When it begins to boil, stir in the corn starch mixture.

  4. Cook until smooth, then stir in the beaten egg whites and cook a little longer.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, boil the yolks of the eggs with 1 quart of milk and sugar until it thickens like cream.

  2. Let the sauce cool 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. 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard-like pudding.
Egg whites
Beaten in at the end to give the pudding a light, airy, foamy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as it cooks, giving it a creamy body.
Milk
Forms the base of both the pudding and the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be cooked gently after being added so they set into soft, airy pieces rather than becoming rubbery or collapsing. Keep the heat moderate and cook only until they are just set.

“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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