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Dessert

Apple Snow

Apple Snow is a dessert made by stewing apples and folding them into beaten egg whites, then served with custard or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple purée

  1. Stew the apples, then strain and beat them with an egg beater.

Make the snow

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

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

  3. Fold in the strained apples and beat until the mixture is fluffy and resembles snow.

Serve

  1. Pile the mixture lightly in a glass dish and garnish with jelly.

  2. Serve with boiled custard or 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Tart apples
Provide the fruit flavor and acidity that balances the sugar and the sweet meringue.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the light, airy, snow-like structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and stabilizes the beaten egg white foam as it is added.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks before the fruit is folded in, since the foam supplies the airy volume. Underbeaten whites will deflate and the dish will be dense, while overbeating can make them grainy and dry.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream. 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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