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Dessert

Snow Ball Apples

Apples coated with marshmallow glaze and rolled in coconut, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and coconut work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry phenylethanol, which smells rose, floral. The science ↓

Snow Ball Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the apples.

Make the marshmallow sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine marshmallows and boiling water; cook until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the marshmallow mixture over the apples.

  2. Bake the apples until done.

  3. Once removed from the oven, roll the apples in shredded coconut and serve cold.

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 + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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

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

  3. Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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
Provide the body of the dish, softening into tender flesh when baked.
Marshmallows
Add sweetness and a glossy, smooth coating that sets as it cools.
Boiling water
Melts the marshmallows into a smooth, pourable mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the marshmallow until smooth. Marshmallows are mostly sugar and gelatin. Gentle heat with water melts them into a pourable syrup. Overheating can scorch the sugar or leave the mixture stiff and grainy once it cools, so watch it closely and stop as soon as it is smooth.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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