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Dessert

Apple Snow with Sponge-Cake

A dessert of sponge cake topped with a frothy apple mixture flavored with sherry, cream, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and apple work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 395 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Snow with Sponge-Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Place sponge cake slices in a glass dish.

  2. Pour sherry over the cake, then add cream.

Make the apple pulp

  1. In a saucepan, combine apples, a little water, sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  2. Cook until apples are soft, then press through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the apple pulp with the egg whites until white and frothy.

  2. Heap the mixture over the sponge cake 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. Sherry + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

Whites of 6 eggs
Whipped into the apple pulp to create a light, frothy, airy texture.
5-6 finely-flavored apples
Cooked and sieved to form the smooth pulp that gives the dish its body and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and balances the tartness of the lemon.
1 cup cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sponge cake base beneath the topping.
⅓ cup sherry
Soaks into the sponge cake, adding moisture and a fortified wine flavor.
4-5 slices of sponge cake
Forms the soft, absorbent base that soaks up the sherry and cream.

The step that matters

Beating the apple pulp with the egg whites. The pulp must be cooled enough and beaten until white and frothy; warm or underbeaten pulp will not hold air, so the snow will collapse and become dense rather than light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, cream, apple, 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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