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Dessert

Apple Float

A dessert of cooked apples mixed with milk, eggs, and sugar, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Float

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and slice the apples.

  2. Cook the apples in enough water to cover them until well done.

  3. Press the cooked apples through a sieve.

  4. Sweeten the pressed apples with crushed sugar.

Make the float

  1. Beat the egg whites to a froth.

  2. Stir the beaten egg whites into the cooled apple mixture.

  3. Heat the sweet milk in boiling water.

  4. Gradually add the beaten egg yolks to the hot milk.

  5. Stir the mixture briskly until thickened.

  6. Remove the mixture from heat.

  7. Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture.

  8. Add flavoring extract to the float mixture.

  9. Serve with cream.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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 and pressed to form the fruit base that gives the dish its body and flavor.
Egg whites
Beaten to a froth to make the light, airy texture of the float.
Egg yolks
Thicken the hot milk into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
Sweet milk
Forms the custard base that the yolks thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple base.

The step that matters

Gradually add the beaten egg yolks to the hot milk. Adding yolks slowly and stirring keeps them from scrambling. Gradual tempering lets the yolks thicken the milk smoothly as they warm.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, 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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