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Dessert

Apple Snow

Apple Snow is a chilled apple dessert with lemon, sugar, egg whites, currant jelly, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and slice the apples.

  2. Steam the apples until tender.

  3. Rub the apples through a colander.

  4. Chill until ice cold.

Make the snow

  1. Add the lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar, and egg whites to the apples.

  2. Beat the mixture until frothy.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately in a deep glass dish.

  2. Dot with currant jelly.

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

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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
Provide the bulk and tart fruit flavour, and when cooked and puréed, the base texture of the dish.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air and lighten the apple purée into a fluffy, snow-like texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the purée and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the apple flavour, and its rind adds aroma.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until frothy. The apple purée must be cold before beating, since warm purée deflates the foam. Egg whites whip best when the mixture is well chilled and beaten until light and airy, which gives the snow its volume.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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