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Dessert

Apple Mould

A gelatin dessert made from apples, sugar, lemon rind, gelatin, and egg white.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple mixture

  1. Peel and core the apples, then simmer them in ½ pint of water until they become a pulp.

  2. Dissolve 1½ oz of gelatine with 1 lb of loaf sugar and the rind of ½ lemon in ½ pint of water.

  3. Mix the dissolved gelatine and sugar with the pulped apples and stir over low heat for a few minutes.

  4. Pass the mixture through a colander and let it cool slightly.

Set and serve

  1. Once nearly cold, whisk in the beaten egg white.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mould and serve with custard.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 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
Cook down to a pulp to provide the body and flavour of the set mould.
Gelatine
Sets the pulped mixture into a firm, sliceable shape as it cools.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mould and helps balance the tartness of the apples.
Egg white
Whisked in near the end to lighten the texture of the mould.

The step that matters

Whisking in the egg white. If the mixture is still warm, the egg white can cook or deflate instead of lightening it. Whisking once it is nearly cold keeps the foam stable and the texture light.

Swap the apple

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

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

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