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Dessert

Apple Snow

A dessert of baked apples folded into beaten egg whites and served with a custard.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple snow

  1. Bake sour apples and pass them through a colander.

  2. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  3. Add powdered sugar and apples to the egg whites and beat until stiff.

Make the custard and serve

  1. For the custard, cook egg yolks, sugar, and milk in a double boiler until thick.

  2. Add vanilla to the custard and serve cold with the apple snow.

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

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

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 to stiff foam, they give the apple snow its light, airy structure.
Apples
Baked and sieved, they supply the bulk and tart flavour of the apple snow.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whites, sweetening the snow and helping it hold its shape.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook gently with the milk, giving it a smooth body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the yolks and sugar.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard in a double boiler. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but too much heat makes them scramble and turn grainy. Gentle, indirect heat keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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