Home › Baked Puddings › Snow Pudding
Snow Pudding
Soak 1/2 box of gelatine in 1/2 cupful cold water, then pour on 1 1/2 cupfuls boiling water; add juice of 1 lemon and 1 cupful sugar, and set in cold water. When nearly cold beat until it thickens, and then add stiffly the beaten whites of 3 eggs. Beat all together, put in moulds and set on ice. Make custard with the yolks of the eggs, 1 pint milk, large spoonful each of sugar and corn starch. Flavor with vanilla, and serve very cold, pouring custard around the snow.
A classic gelatine snow pudding with a stirred custard sauce. The method is sound in outline, but the egg whites are folded into a mixture that has already cooled and are never heated afterwards.
- Why the cautionThe whites of three eggs go into the gelatine cold and are set on ice, so nothing in the finished snow ever reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella. The dish is then held chilled and eaten over a day or two, which does nothing to reduce the risk. Use a current recipe written for pasteurized whites if you want to make snow pudding.
- The custard sauceThe yolk custard is cooked, but the recipe gives no temperature or visual cue. A stirred custard is done at about 175-180F, when it coats the back of a spoon; above about 185F the yolks curdle.
- Half a box of gelatineAmbiguous. A modern Knox box holds four 1/4-oz envelopes, making half a box two envelopes, but box sizes in this period were not standardized, so the equivalence is uncertain. Two cupfuls of liquid set with two envelopes is already firm; more would be rubbery.
- Set in cold waterThis means standing the bowl in a basin of cold water to chill it quickly, not adding water to the mixture.
- The hingeThe gelatine must be beaten when it is syrupy and just beginning to thicken. Beat too early and it will not hold air; leave it until set and it breaks into lumps that no amount of whisking will smooth.
- Set on iceAn icebox instruction. The refrigerator does the same work; the pudding needs several hours to set firm enough to unmould.
- Corn starch in the custardA "large spoonful" is most likely a rounded tablespoon, though the measure is imprecise. Starch stabilizes the yolks against curdling and gives a sauce thick enough to pool around the moulded snow rather than run off the plate.
- YieldAbout a quart of pudding and a pint of sauce, enough for six to eight.