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Dessert

Apple Snow

Apple Snow is a dessert made from cooked apples, egg whites, sugar, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple pulp

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with the lemon rind and enough water to prevent burning.

  3. Cook until tender, then remove the lemon peel.

  4. Mash the apples into a pulp and let cool.

Make the snow and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold in the apple pulp.

  2. Add the sifted sugar and whisk until the mixture is very stiff.

  3. Serve in a glass dish or small glasses, garnished with barberries or jelly strips.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 pulp that gives the dessert its body and fruity flavour.
Whites of 10 eggs
Whipped into a foam that traps air and gives the dessert its light, snowy structure.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the pulp and stabilises the whisked whites, helping the mixture hold its stiff shape.

The step that matters

Whisk the sugar into the whites until very stiff. Egg white foam is fragile and can collapse if overbeaten or deflated. Sugar added once the whites are stiff helps stabilise the foam, and the pulp must be cool so it does not melt or loosen the structure when folded in.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, 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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