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Dessert

Apple Float

Apple Float is a dessert of stewed apples mixed with beaten egg whites, sweetened, flavored, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the apple base

  1. Pare, slice, and stew the apples in enough water to cover them until well done.

  2. Press the cooked apples through a sieve and sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. While cooling, beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and stir them into the apple mixture.

  2. Flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  3. Serve with cream.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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
Cook down into a soft pulp that forms the body of the dessert.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they lighten the apple pulp into a airy, floating texture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and balances its tartness.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold stiff peaks and are stirred in gently while the apple mixture is still cooling. If the pulp is too hot, the foam will collapse and the dessert will lose its light, floating texture.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon, 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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