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Dessert

Lemon Snow Pudding

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

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

Lemon Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin base

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

  2. Add sugar and pour boiling water over it. Stir for 1 minute.

  3. Flavor with lemon juice.

  4. Strain the mixture into a bowl to cool.

Whip and set the pudding

  1. When cold and beginning to thicken, beat until stiff. Whip in the stiffened egg whites. Beat for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour into a mold wet with cold water and set in a cold place to form.

  3. Let it get very cold.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Make a custard with the egg yolks.

  2. When the pudding is turned out, pour the custard around the base.

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
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam, they give the pudding a light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that cuts through the sweetness.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard served alongside the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture when cold and beginning to thicken, before adding the egg whites. Gelatine sets quickly as it cools. If it is still warm or fully set, the foam will not hold and the whites will not blend in evenly. Beating at the thickening point lets it trap air and stay light.

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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