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Dessert

Apple Meringue

A baked dessert of apple sauce topped with meringue and served with a custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Apple Meringue

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Apple Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the apple sauce in a pudding dish.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually stir in the sugar and lemon extract.

  2. Spread the meringue over the apple sauce and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Make the custard and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks and milk, sweeten to taste, and add vanilla.

  2. Serve the meringue cold in the baking dish with the custard as a sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard sauce, adding moisture and richness.
Apple sauce
Provides a moist, tart fruit layer beneath the meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites need to be whipped to full stiffness before sugar is added, because the foam traps air and gives the meringue its volume. Under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold their shape in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sauce, egg, sugar, milk, vanilla. 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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