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Dessert

Apple Foam

A gelatinous dessert made from stewed apples, sugar, water, and corn starch, served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Apple Foam

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 Foam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Stew the apples in water and sugar until tender without breaking.

  2. Mix corn starch with a little cold water and add to the apples, stirring constantly.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, then pour into a mold and let cool.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 fruit body and flavor of the custard as they soften into a purée-like texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a set custard as it heats and gelatinizes.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps hold moisture in the cooked fruit.

The step that matters

Adding the corn starch slurry while stirring. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water first and stirred constantly into the hot apples, or it will clump. It thickens only once the mixture reaches a simmer and is cooked long enough to lose its raw starchy taste.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, cream. 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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