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Dessert

Apple Snow

A dessert of stewed apples folded into beaten egg whites, flavored with lemon peel and rose extract, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,174 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple

  1. Stew the apples until very sweet, then strain through a fine sieve.

  2. Flavor the strained apple with lemon peel and rose extract.

Make the snow

  1. Beat the egg whites until very light.

  2. Gradually beat the sweetened apple into the egg whites, one spoonful at a time.

  3. Continue beating until well combined, using a Dover egg-beater.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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 + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Apple + rosetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 foam, they trap air and set the light, airy structure of the snow.
Apples
Stewed and strained, they provide the sweet fruit base and body of the dish.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the sweetness of the apple.

The step that matters

Gradually beat the sweetened apple into the egg whites. Adding the apple one spoonful at a time keeps the whites from deflating. Egg foam is fragile, and rapid or heavy additions knock out the air that gives the snow its lightness.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, rose, 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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