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Dessert

Apple Cream

A dessert of stewed apples mixed with whipped egg whites and powdered sugar, served with flavored sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple mixture

  1. Stew the apples until tender and mash them to a pulp.

Whip and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites until very light.

  2. Once the apples are cool, add them to the egg whites along with the powdered sugar.

  3. Whisk the mixture until it holds its shape when placed on a dish.

  4. Serve with sweetened cream flavored with lemon, vanilla, or wine.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 main fruit body and moisture, and sweetness as they cook down to a pulp.
Egg whites
Whisked into foam, they give the dish its light, airy structure and hold it in shape.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Whisking the mixture until it holds its shape. Egg white foam must be whisked to the right point and the apple pulp must be cool before folding in. Warm pulp can deflate the foam, so the dish loses its lightness and does not hold its shape.

Swap the apple

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

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

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