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Dessert

Apple Cream

Apple Cream is a dessert made from roasted apples, sugar, eggs, and arrack.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the apples

  1. Roast the apples in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until soft.

  2. Pass the roasted apples through a sieve.

Make the cream

  1. Mix the apple puree with the sugar and egg yolks until frothy.

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy and fold into the mixture.

  3. Add the arrack and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. 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

Pippin apples
Provide the main body and flavour of the cream once roasted and pureed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and give it a smooth, thick body.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they make the cream light and airy when folded in.
Arrack
Adds a distinctive aroma and flavour to the finished cream.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to a stable foam trap air that gives lightness. Overmixing or deflating them during folding causes the cream to lose volume and turn dense.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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