Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Float

A dessert of stewed apples topped with frothy egg whites, custard, wine-soaked stale cake, and garnished with nutmeg and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Float

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew the apples until soft, then drain and cool them on a sieve.

  2. Place the apples on a flat dish and sprinkle with sugar and lemon essence or juice.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy and mix with the apple mixture.

Layer the dessert

  1. Fill a glass bowl or custard cups with soft custard.

  2. Spoon the frothy mixture on top of the custard as high as possible.

Add the cake and finish

  1. Layer sliced stale cake in a deep glass dish and pour white wine over it.

  2. Let the cake absorb the wine.

  3. Grate nutmeg and add lemon rind on top.

  4. Fill the dish two-thirds full with soft custard.

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. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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

Apples
Cooked into a soft pulp that forms the fruity base of the frothy layer.
Egg whites
Beaten into foam that gives the topping its light, airy texture.
Soft custard
Creamy base that adds richness and moisture under the topping.
Stale cake
Soaks up the wine, becoming soft and moist in the layers.
White wine
Soaks into the cake, adding moisture and a light acidic aroma.
Fine white sugar
Sweetens the apple mixture and balances the lemon's tartness.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until frothy. Whites must be beaten to a stable foam to hold their shape on top of the apple. Underbeaten whites stay runny and sink into the custard, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes