Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Snow

A dessert of stewed apples mixed with egg white, whisked until stiff and served with boiled custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew the sour apples until tender.

  2. Sweeten the apples to taste.

  3. Strain the apples through a fine wire sieve.

Make the snow

  1. In a bowl, combine 1 pint of strained apples with the egg white.

  2. Whisk the mixture briskly until it is stiff and white.

  3. Serve with boiled custard.

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

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

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

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

  3. Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Sour apples
Provide the tart flavor and the pulp that gives the dish its body.
Egg white
Whipped into foam, it traps air and sets the apple mixture light and stiff.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart apples and balances their acidity.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg white and apple pulp. The mixture must be whisked briskly until stiff and white. Under-whisking leaves it loose and flat, while the egg white's proteins unfold and trap air only when beaten enough to hold stiff peaks.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

More apple snow recipes

You might also like