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Dessert

Apple Snow

A dessert of stewed apples mixed with lemon, sugar, and eggs, topped with a sweet sauce and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Steam until tender, then rub through a colander.

  3. When cool, mix in lemon juice, lemon rind, 1/2 cup sugar, and egg whites.

  4. Heat until thick and pile in a glass dish.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. Stir in egg yolks and 3 tablespoons sugar until combined.

Make the apple snow and serve

  1. Stew 6 apples in just enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Pass the pulp through a sieve.

  3. Stir in 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract.

  4. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

  5. Gradually add the apple mixture and 1 cup powdered sugar.

  6. Heap the apple mixture on a glass dish.

  7. Garnish with bits of currant or raspberry jelly.

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

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

  2. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the pulp, giving the dessert its body and tart flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the apple mixture its light, airy, foamy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard-style sauce as they heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, which the egg yolks thicken when heated.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped to stiff peaks and folded in gently so the apple mixture stays light. Overmixing or deflating them makes the snow dense and loose.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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