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Dessert

Apple Float

A chilled dessert of mashed apples layered with whipped egg whites and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Float

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Mash the cooked apples smooth through a sieve.

  2. Sweeten the apples with sugar and flavor with nutmeg.

Assemble

  1. Add the apples to the beaten egg whites, one spoonful at a time.

  2. In a serving dish, place the cream seasoned with sugar and nutmeg at the bottom.

  3. Top with the apple mixture.

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.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Cooked apples
Provide the main body, moisture and fruity flavor of the dish.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the apple mixture its light, airy texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth fat layer beneath the lighter apple mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and cream, and helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.

The step that matters

Adding the apples to the beaten egg whites. Folding the apples in one spoonful at a time keeps the foam from deflating. Dumping them in at once knocks out the air bubbles the egg whites hold, leaving a dense, watery result.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, egg, cream. 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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