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Dessert

Snow Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Heat the gelatine mixture on the stove until dissolved.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool to the consistency of cream.

  4. Beat the mixture until white and foamy.

Fold and set

  1. Beat the egg whites until light and fluffy.

  2. Fold the beaten egg whites into the gelatine mixture.

  3. Add the sugar, then the lemon juice, and mix well.

  4. Set the mixture in a cold place to harden.

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. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a light, wobbly structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they add airiness and lightness to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the gelatine mixture cool to the consistency of cream before folding in the egg whites. If the gelatine is still hot and runny, it deflates the whipped egg whites and the foam collapses. If it has cooled too much and begins to set, the egg whites will not blend in evenly. Cooling to a creamy thickness keeps the foam intact.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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