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Snow Souffle
Mrs. J. Louis Harris.
Beat the whites of two eggs to a stiff froth; dissolve one-half box of gelatine in a little more than a pint of hot water; two cups of sugar, and the juice of two lemons; when this is dissolved and cooled, stir into it the eggs you have beaten, beat the whole together until it is white and stiff; mould and pour around it soft custard
A Victorian snow pudding: gelatine, sugar and lemon whipped with raw egg white until it sets pale and foamy, then flooded with custard. The structure is sound, but the whites are never heated at any stage.
- Raw egg white is the problemThe beaten whites are folded into gelatine liquid that has already been allowed to cool, and the moulded soufflé is chilled, not cooked. Nothing in the method reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella, which can be present inside intact, clean-looking shell eggs. A current recipe using pasteurised whites should be used instead.
- The custard compounds it"Soft custard" of the period is a stirred egg-and-milk sauce, and period instructions of this kind give no temperature guidance, so it may not reach a point that would make it safe. Poured around a chilled dessert and served cold, it also spends time in the range where any surviving bacteria multiply.
- A box of gelatine is not a modern packetNineteenth-century gelatine was sold in boxes of sheets, shreds or granules, and box sizes varied by maker; a box is often reckoned at roughly an ounce, which would make "one-half box" something like half an ounce. Modern granulated envelopes hold a quarter ounce each, and sheet gelatine varies by bloom strength, so the original quantity does not map cleanly onto anything on a supermarket shelf.
- Two cups of sugarTwo cups to a little over a pint of liquid makes a sweet set, and the sugar is doing structural work here, helping the mixture whip to a stable, meringue-like foam rather than collapsing, not just flavouring.
- Why it goes whiteThe whole is beaten after the gelatine is added, so air is trapped as the gel begins to thicken. Beating too early gives a soup that never holds; too late and the mixture seizes into rubbery lumps before it aerates.
- YieldA pint of liquid plus two cups of sugar makes a substantial mould, enough for six to eight small servings with the custard.
Snow puddings, snow soufflés and "lemon sponges" fill American community cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s, and they exist because packaged gelatine had become a cheap, reliable household staple — prepared gelatines had been sold in America since the 1840s. Before that, a cook wanting a set dessert boiled calves' feet or isinglass for hours; once gelatine came in labelled boxes, any household could produce a moulded sweet in an afternoon. The Home Cook Book, compiled from contributions by named Chicago women and sold for charity, is exactly the kind of collection where such recipes spread, each dish carrying its contributor's name like a signature. The pairing with a thin pouring custard is older than the gelatine and shows how a new convenience product was fitted into a familiar way of serving.