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Dessert

Apple Float

A dessert of stewed apples topped with custard and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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.

Make the float

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy using an egg beater.

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

  3. Top the custard with the frothy mixture, piling it as high as possible.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Cooked until soft, they form the fruit base that the custard and froth sit on.
Egg whites
Beaten into a foam, they form the light, airy topping that gives the dish its float.
Fine white sugar
Sweetens the apples and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Soft custard
Forms the smooth, creamy layer beneath the foamy egg white topping.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until frothy. Egg whites foam best when beaten until frothy and free of grease or yolk, since fat stops them trapping air. A stable foam holds its shape on top of the custard instead of sinking into it.

Swap the apple

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

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

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