Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Fool

A dessert of stewed apples puréed with sugar, lemon, spices, and beaten egg whites, served over cream or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Fool

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, core, and cut the apples into thin bits.

  2. Stew the apples with water, cloves, cinnamon, and lemon peel until tender.

  3. Pulp the mixture through a sieve.

Make the fool

  1. Add brown sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites to the pulp.

  2. Beat the mixture together for an hour.

Serve

  1. Serve over rich cream or boiled custard in a glass dish.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stewing apples
Provide the main body and flavour, breaking down into a soft pulp when stewed.
Egg whites
Whipped by beating, they add air and lightness to the pulp.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples and sugar.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture together for an hour. Egg whites need steady beating to trap air and hold a light, airy texture. Stopping early leaves the fool dense and loose, while the pulp must be fully cooled and smooth first so it whips evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, clove, cinnamon, 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes