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Dessert

Frosted Apples

A dessert of peeled apples coated in egg white and sugar, baked until candied.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Frosted Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and stew the apples until tender but not broken.

Make the frosting

  1. Whip the egg white until frothy.

  2. Dip the apples into the whipped egg white.

  3. Sift pounded sugar thickly over the apples.

Candy and serve

  1. Let them cool and then place in a cool oven to candy.

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

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 fruit base that is softened by stewing and then coated.
Egg white
Whipped to a froth, it gives a light coating that holds the sugar on the apples.
Pounded sugar
Sifted over the egg white, it forms a sweet, crisp candied layer as it dries in the oven.

The step that matters

Placing the apples in a cool oven to candy. Heat must be gentle so the egg white and sugar dry and set into a crisp coating without browning or weeping. A hot oven would darken or scorch the sugar before the coating sets.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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