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Dessert

Snow Jelly

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the gelatine

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in ½ cup of cold water.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 20 minutes.

  3. Add ½ cup of boiling water. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved.

Make the snow

  1. When the mixture is nearly cold, mix in ¾ pound of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon.

  2. Beat the mixture until very light.

  3. Fold in the 3 egg whites beaten to a stiff froth.

Set

  1. Turn the mixture into moulds.

  2. Refrigerate until set.

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 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
Provides the gel structure that lets the dessert hold its shape when set.
Egg whites
Beaten to a stiff froth, they add airy volume and a light, foamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the dessert.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten to a stiff froth and folded gently so the air is kept; deflating them makes the dessert dense rather than light and snowy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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