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Dessert

Snow Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert flavored with lemon and vanilla, folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Pour boiling water over the soaked gelatine, add sugar, and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add lemon juice and strain the mixture into a tin basin.

Chill and whip

  1. Place the basin in a pan of ice water and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, beat the mixture until fluffy and white.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the pudding.

Mold and set

  1. Dip a fancy mold in cold water, pour the pudding into it, and refrigerate for 4 hours 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. 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. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture so the pudding holds its shape when unmolded.
Eggs
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks add air and a light, fluffy structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps dissolve the gelatine mixture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped to stiff peaks without overbeating, and folded in gently, so the air stays trapped and the pudding stays light and fluffy rather than deflating.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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