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Snow Pudding II
Beat whites of four eggs until stiff, add one-half tablespoon granulated gelatine dissolved in three tablespoons boiling water, beat until thoroughly mixed, add one-fourth cup powdered sugar, and flavor with one-half teaspoon lemon extract. Pile lightly on dish, serve with Boiled Custard.
A gelatine-set meringue, piled soft and served with a custard sauce. The egg whites here are never cooked, and that is the problem.
- Raw egg white, uncookedThe three tablespoons of boiling water used to dissolve the gelatine are far too little to heat four beaten whites to a pasteurising temperature; the mixture never rises above lukewarm. Salmonella can be present in shell eggs, whites included, and this dessert then sits at room temperature while it is piled and served. Use a current recipe if you want a snow pudding.
- The custard does not helpBoiled custard is cooked and safe in itself, but pouring it over the finished snow does not heat the meringue. The two are combined at the table.
- "Granulated gelatine"This is the loose powdered gelatine rather than leaf gelatine; packaged granulated gelatine became a widely available grocery item towards the end of the nineteenth century. Half a tablespoon is about 1 1/2 teaspoons, roughly two-thirds of a modern quarter-ounce envelope.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage this generally meant finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold under the same name today.
- Lemon extractPeriod lemon extract was typically an alcoholic tincture of oil of lemon, and can be stronger than some extracts sold today.
- Why it is called IIThe numbering implies an earlier snow pudding elsewhere in the book; that recipe is not on this page, so the two cannot be compared from the text given here.
Snow pudding belongs to a family of light gelatine desserts that became common in American cookbooks after packaged granulated gelatine became a cheap grocery item late in the nineteenth century; before that, a cook wanting a set dessert had to boil down calf's foot or buy expensive isinglass. Such recipes suited the period's taste for pale, mounded, faintly flavoured sweets served in glass dishes with a pool of thin custard. The lemon flavouring is traditional to the dish and does most of the work, since the pudding itself is little more than air, sugar and set white.