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Dessert

Apple Puff

A dessert of apples topped with a frothy whipped mixture of egg whites, wine, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Puff

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple base

  1. Prepare the apples as for sauce.

  2. While hot, mash the apples with a small amount of butter and a little sugar, adding lemon juice and sugar to taste.

Make the topping and assemble

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until light and frothy.

  2. Add the wine, cream, powdered sugar, and lemon juice to the egg whites and continue beating until frothy.

  3. Spread the frothy mixture over the apples.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten into a foam that gives the topping its light, airy structure.
Apples
Form the cooked fruit base that the frothy topping rests on.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the mashed apples.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the frothy topping.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apples.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until frothy. Egg whites must be beaten until they foam and hold air. Underbeaten whites stay runny and won't lift the topping, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy. Beating the whites before adding the wine and cream helps them trap air more evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, lemon, egg, wine, 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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