Home › Dessert › Snowball Pudding
Snowball Pudding
One half box Cox's gelatine, whites of three eggs, sugar and vanilla to taste, soak the gelatine in enough cold water to cover it for an hour, then add a tea-cup of boiling water; after it is dissolved add enough cold water to make a pint of it all together, strain this on a platter, put unbeaten whites of three eggs in it and beat until it is a stiff foam. When nearly beaten enough, sweeten with granulated sugar, add vanilla to it, and finish beating; put them in tea cups previously wet with cold water. When moulded in the cups turn them out and eat with whipped cream or boiled custard.
A Victorian "snow" pudding: gelatine whipped with raw egg white until it holds air, set in teacups. The method depends on the whites never being cooked, and that is the problem.
- Why it fails todayThe three egg whites go into the gelatine unbeaten and are never heated. By the time they are added, the pint of gelatine has been let down with cold water and is barely warm; nothing in the process approaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, which can be present in the white as well as the yolk. The pudding is then chilled and served cold.
- Not a case of "cook it longer"There is no stage to extend or temperature to raise without destroying the dish, since the foam depends on cold, uncooked white. If you want a snow pudding, use a current recipe built on pasteurised egg white or Italian meringue.
- A box of Cox's gelatineCox's gelatine was sold by the boxed packet, but how much a box held is not certain, so half a box can only be estimated -- perhaps something like half an ounce, roughly two modern envelopes of powdered gelatine. Nineteenth-century gelatine also varied considerably in strength, so any equivalence with a modern product is approximate.
- A tea-cupNot a measuring cup. In household books of this period a tea-cup is often reckoned at around 6 fluid ounces, smaller than the 8-ounce cup, though usage varied; here it only matters as a step toward the final pint.
- Strain this on a platterThe gelatine is poured out shallow so it cools quickly and evenly before whipping, and the straining catches undissolved grains. It is a sensible technique, and the one part of the recipe worth remembering.
- YieldA pint of gelatine plus three whites whips up to a considerable volume, enough to fill several teacups; it is served with whipped cream or boiled custard.
Snow puddings, snowballs and "whips" filled the dessert chapters of American household books in the later nineteenth century, though desserts of this kind are older, and their spread is often linked to the arrival of cheap and reliable commercial gelatine. Earlier cooks made jellies from calves' feet or isinglass, a long and grubby business; packaged sheet gelatine from firms such as J. & G. Cox of Edinburgh, whose name appears here as a brand shorthand, turned a day's work into an hour's soaking. The result was a whole genre of pale, cold, mould-turned desserts that cost little, used up whites left from custards and cakes, and looked impressive on a supper table. The teacup mould is a domestic touch, the cups wetted so the pudding would slip out clean.