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Dessert

Apple Snow

A dessert of mashed sour apples folded into stiffened egg whites, sweetened with powdered sugar and lemon juice, topped with bright jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Quarter and core the sour apples without peeling them.

  2. Steam or stew the apples until tender, then mash through a sieve.

Make the snow

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the powdered sugar.

  2. Mix in the apple puree and lemon juice, and add nutmeg to taste.

  3. Pile the mixture in a dish and top with bits of bright jelly.

  4. Serve with or without 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Provide the main bulk and tart flavour, and the puree that gives the dessert its body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the dessert its light, airy, snowy structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the tart apple flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff, then adding the sugar gradually. Egg whites must be beaten to a stiff foam and the sugar added slowly so the foam stays stable. If sugar is dumped in early or the whites are under-beaten, the foam collapses and the snow turns dense and watery.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, 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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