Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Snow

Apple Snow is a dessert made of cooked apples folded into whipped egg whites and topped with custard and nonpareils.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple pulp

  1. Core the apples and place them in a pan covered with cold water.

  2. Cook the apples slowly until soft.

  3. Once the apples are soft, place them on a sieve and remove the skins.

  4. Put the apple pulp into a bowl.

  5. Beat the apple pulp until frothy.

Make the custard

  1. Whisk the egg yolks and milk together to make a custard.

  2. Set the custard aside to cool.

Make the snow and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites with powdered sugar until stiff.

  2. Fold in the whipped egg whites until it resembles snow.

  3. Pour the cold custard into a glass bowl.

  4. Top the custard with the apple snow.

  5. Sprinkle colored nonpareils on top.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  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 to a soft pulp that gives the dessert its fruity body and flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that lightens the apple pulp and gives the snow its airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a smooth custard through gentle heating.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, providing richness and a creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whipped egg whites and helps them hold their stiff structure.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the egg white foam. Stirring or deflating it makes the snow dense and loses its light, airy texture.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

More apple snow recipes

Custard 3 See all 166 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes