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Dessert

Snow Cream

A chilled gelatin dessert flavored with lemon and sugar, folded with whipped egg whites and a lemon custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Snow Cream

Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snow Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the snow cream

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ pint of water for 1 hour.

  2. Add the remaining ½ pint of water, lemon juice, and sugar to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Whisk the entire mixture for 30 minutes.

  5. Pour into a mold and let it set.

Make the custard and serve

  1. For the custard, use the egg yolks and ½ pint of milk, sweetening and flavoring with lemon.

  2. Pour the custard around the set cream when unmolded.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the whipped mixture into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air and give the cream its light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds body to the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavors the cream and custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the milk to form a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Whisk the entire mixture for 30 minutes. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so the mixture must be whipped while still loose. Whipping for the full time incorporates air evenly, producing a light, stable foam rather than a dense or uneven set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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