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Dessert

Apple Snow

A dessert made from cooked apples, lemon rind, sugar, and stiffened egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Place the apples in a saucepan with the lemon rind and enough water to prevent burning.

  3. Cook until the apples are tender, then remove the lemon peel.

  4. Mash the apples into a pulp and let cool.

Make the snow

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Stir the apple pulp into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Add the sifted sugar and whisk until the mixture is very stiff.

Serve

  1. Serve in a glass dish or small glasses, garnished with preserved barberries or jelly strips.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 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

Apples
Cooked to a pulp, they provide the flavour and the body of the dessert.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the dessert its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and stiffens the whisked mixture as it is beaten in.

The step that matters

Whisking the apple pulp into the egg whites. The apple pulp must be cool before it is folded into the beaten whites, because heat deflates the foam. Whisking until very stiff sets the airy structure that gives the snow its volume.

Swap the apple

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

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

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