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Dessert

Apple Snow

Apple Snow is a baked apple pudding made with apples, suet, eggs, flour, milk, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix the flour with the milk to form a smooth batter.

  3. Whisk the eggs well and add them to the batter.

  4. Pour the batter into a well-buttered pie dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Clean the apples, cut them in half, and remove the cores.

  2. Place the apple halves in the batter with the skin side up.

  3. Sprinkle the chopped suet on top and grate a little nutmeg over it.

  4. Bake in the oven for 1 hour.

  5. Sift castor sugar over the pudding before serving.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 fruit flavour and body, and soften into the set batter as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the batter as it bakes, giving the pudding its structure and a light, custardy texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk and eggs into a smooth batter that holds its shape as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the batter, adding moisture and softness.
Suet
Melts during baking, adding richness and fat to the pudding and crisping the top.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs well into the batter. Thoroughly blended eggs and flour give an even, smooth batter. Lumps of unmixed flour or egg can cause uneven setting and a streaky texture.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, nutmeg, 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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