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Dessert

Snow Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 lemon snow

  1. Combine boiling water, lemon juice, and sugar in a double boiler.

  2. Mix corn starch with cold water.

  3. Add the corn starch mixture to the boiling mixture.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

  6. Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture off the heat.

  7. Pour the mixture into molds.

  8. Cool the molds.

Make the custard

  1. Beat egg yolks, whole egg, and sugar together for the custard.

  2. Add milk to the custard mixture.

  3. Stir the custard mixture in a double boiler until thickened.

  4. Season the custard with lemon or vanilla.

  5. Serve the custard cold.

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. Lemon + corntop 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. Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, they give the pudding its light, airy, foamy texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling lemon liquid into a set, sliceable base as its starch gelatinizes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set gently over heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding creaminess and body.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the sweetness of the snow.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture off the heat. Folding gently keeps the whipped foam from deflating. Adding the whites off the heat avoids cooking them too early, which would make the snow dense and grainy.

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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