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Dessert

Apple Snow

A dessert made from boiled apples, folded into stiff egg whites and served with a thickened yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Quarter and core the apples, but do not peel them.

  2. Boil the apples until soft.

  3. Press the boiled apples through a colander.

  4. Let the pressed apple pulp cool.

Make the snow

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add ½ cup of sugar while continuing to beat the egg whites.

  3. Slowly fold the cooled apple pulp into the stiff egg whites.

  4. Place the mixture in the refrigerator to chill thoroughly.

Make the custard sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Add the milk to the beaten yolks.

  3. Heat the yolk and milk mixture gently, stirring constantly until thickened but not boiling.

  4. Add flavoring to the sauce as desired.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Provide the bulk and tart flavor, and their pectin helps the pulp hold its body.
Eggs
Whites whip into a stiff foam for lightness; yolks thicken the milk into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple snow and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard sauce, which thickens when heated with egg yolks.

The step that matters

Heating the yolk and milk mixture. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. If the mixture boils or is heated too fast, the yolks can scramble and the sauce turns grainy, so stir constantly and stop once it thickens.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla, egg, milk. 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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