Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with egg whites, confectioner's sugar, lemon juice, custard, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and corn 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. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the box of gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  2. When nearly cold, strain the mixture and add the well-beaten egg whites, confectioner's sugar, and lemon juice.

  3. Beat the mixture until fluffy, similar to how you would for Charlotte Russe.

Make the custard and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks, milk, corn starch, and sugar to make a boiled custard.

  2. Pour the custard over the pudding when serving and flavor with wine.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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 mixture into a soft, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, creating the light, fluffy texture of the pudding.
Confectioner's sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves smoothly into the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor.
Milk
Provides moisture and richness to the custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it cooks.

The step that matters

Beating while nearly set. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so the mixture must be nearly cold but still fluid. Beating then traps air in the egg whites, giving the light, fluffy texture. If it sets too firm, it will not whip well.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More snow pudding recipes

Egg 5Sauce 3 See all 260 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes