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Dessert

Frosted Apples

Frosted apples are apples stewed in syrup, coated with egg white, dusted with powdered sugar, and cooled in an oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Frosted Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the apples and stew them in a thin syrup until tender, being careful not to break them.

Frost and candy

  1. Dip the apples in the whipped egg white.

  2. Quickly sift powdered sugar over the apples.

  3. Place the apples in a cool oven to candy.

Serve

  1. Serve the frosted apples.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Apple + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together742 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Hold their shape during stewing and provide the tender fruit base for the dish.
Egg white
Whipped, it forms a thin coating that the powdered sugar adheres to.
Powdered sugar
Forms a sweet, dry crust over the egg white that candies in the oven.
Thin syrup
Sweetens the apples and moistens them as they stew until tender.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples gently. Apples held at a steady, gentle simmer stay whole and tender; boiling hard breaks down their cell walls and makes them fall apart before frosting.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, egg, sugar. 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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