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Dessert

Apple Float

Apple Float is a dessert made by cooking apples, blending them, sweetening, adding egg whites, and serving with custard or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,790 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Float

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Core and peel the apples.

  2. Cook the apples until they can be pierced with a straw.

Make the float

  1. Beat the cooked apples until smooth.

  2. Sweeten the apples to taste.

  3. Once cold, add 1 beaten egg white for every cup of apple.

  4. Flavor with nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled custard or plain 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. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

Apples
Form the smooth, fruity pulp that makes up most of the dessert.
Egg whites
Whipped into the pulp, they trap air to make it light and airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and balances its natural tartness.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, spicy aroma that complements the cooked apple.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites once the apple is cold. Egg whites foam best when cool. Adding them to hot apple pulp can partly cook them and weaken the foam, leaving the float dense rather than light.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, 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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