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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A dessert made with boiling water, sugar, corn starch, lemon juice, egg whites, egg yolks, milk, and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine boiling water, sugar, and corn starch mixed with lemon juice in a pot.

  2. Stir until thickened, then fold in beaten egg whites and beat for 10 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Cook egg yolks with milk and sugar in a saucepan until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the snow pudding topped with the custard.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Corn starch
Thickens the hot liquid into a soft, set pudding structure.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they give the pudding its light, airy, snowy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk custard as they cook, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the pudding until thickened before folding in the egg whites. If the starch mixture is not fully thickened and hot, the cornstarch will not set and the folded egg white foam will deflate and weep. Egg yolks in the custard also curdle if overheated, so cook them gently while stirring.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, egg, milk. 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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