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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with sugar, lemon juice, egg whites, and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the snow

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

  2. Add boiling water, sugar, and lemon juice; stir until sugar dissolves.

  3. Strain and set in ice water to cool.

  4. Beat egg whites to stiff froth; when gelatine thickens, beat in the whites. Continue beating until the mixture is uniformly white.

  5. Pour into a pudding mold and refrigerate for 2-3 hours.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, beat egg yolks and sugar for 6 minutes, then add cold milk.

  2. In a double boiler, heat the remaining milk until boiling.

  3. Stir in the egg mixture and cook until it coats the spoon, about 5 minutes.

  4. Transfer to a cold bowl and stir until cool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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 light, wobbly structure that holds the pudding's shape.
Egg whites
Beaten to a stiff froth, they trap air and give the snow its light, airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites into the gelatine. The gelatine must be thickened but not fully set, or the whites will not blend in evenly and the foam will collapse. Beating until stiff and uniformly white traps air so the pudding stays light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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