Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Apple Snow
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Stir half the sugar, the yolks of all the eggs, and the white of one egg into the hot milk.
Cook and stir constantly until the mixture thickens.
Let the custard cool while whipping the remaining egg whites into a stiff meringue with the remaining sugar.
Assemble and serve
Peel the apples and grate them directly into the meringue, stirring immediately to prevent discoloration.
Put the cold custard in the bottom of a glass dish and heap the meringue on top.
Serve immediately after making.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Eggs
- Yolks thicken the custard, while whites whip into a stiff meringue that gives the dessert its airy top.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard, which the egg yolks thicken as it cooks.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
- Apples (in the method)
- Provide the fruit flavor and light texture folded into the meringue.
The step that matters
Stir the apples into the meringue immediately. Grated apple browns quickly once exposed to air, so it should be folded in right away to limit discoloration. The meringue should also be stiff enough to hold its volume once the apple is added.
“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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