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 Snow
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apples
Wipe and core the apples, placing them in a granite baking pan.
Add 1 teaspoon of sugar into each apple's core space.
Pour ¼ cup of boiling water into the pan and bake carefully.
Once done, let the apples cool completely.
Make the snow
Scrape the pulp from the skins and press it through a vegetable press or sieve.
Mix in ½ cup of powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice.
Add the unbeaten egg white and beat the mixture with a surprise egg beater for 20 minutes until white and fluffy.
Heap the mixture into a serving dish and serve with custard sauce or alone.
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.
-
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
-
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
-
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
-
Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
-
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Their pulp provides the bulk and body of the fluffy mixture once pressed smooth.
- Egg white
- Its proteins trap air when beaten, creating the light, fluffy, foamy structure.
- Powdered sugar
- Dissolves easily into the pulp and adds sweetness while helping stabilize the beaten foam.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the beaten egg white stable.
The step that matters
Beating the egg white. The egg white must be beaten long enough to trap air into a stable foam. Underbeaten mixture stays dense and collapses, while the unbeaten white is folded into the pulp as a whole for the fluffy texture.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, egg):
- Orangefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Limefits better
- 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.
More apple snow recipes
You might also like
Apple Pudding256 recipes
Lemon Cake228 recipes
Lemon Ice147 recipes
Lemon Sherbet103 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.