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Dessert

Apple Island

A dessert of stewed apples sweetened with sugar, flavored with lemon or rose, topped with beaten egg whites and served with boiled custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Island

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple puree

  1. Stew enough apples to make 1 quart, using as little water as possible.

  2. Strain the stewed apples through a sieve.

  3. Sweeten the apple puree with fine white sugar and flavor with lemon or rose.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to a hard froth and gently stir into the apple mixture just before serving.

  2. Serve in a glass dish with a boiled custard made from the yolks of the eggs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Stewed apples
Provide the main body and fruity flavor of the dessert.
Egg whites
Whipped into a froth, they add an airy, light texture to the apple mixture.
Fine white sugar
Sweetens the apple puree to balance its tartness.
Lemon or rose flavoring
Adds a bright aroma that flavors the apple puree.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites beaten to a hard froth lose their air if they sit or are overmixed, so the dessert turns dense and flat. Stirring them in gently just before serving keeps the foam intact.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. 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.

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