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Dessert

Apple Snow

Apple Snow is a dessert made from cooked apple pulp folded with stiff egg white and sugar, served with cream or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apple

  1. Peel, core, and cut the apple into quarters.

  2. Thinly cut the rind of half a lemon.

  3. Add the cut rind to the apple in an enamel saucepan with a little water to prevent burning.

  4. Cook until the apple is soft.

  5. Remove the lemon rind.

  6. Let the apple cool.

  7. Beat the cooled apple to a pulp.

Make the snow and serve

  1. Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks.

  2. Fold the stiff egg white into the apple pulp.

  3. Gradually add castor sugar while whisking until the mixture is stiff.

  4. Serve with cream or boiled 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

Apple
Provides the bulk and flavour base, softening into the pulp that the egg white is folded into.
Egg white
Whisked to stiff peaks, it traps air and gives the dish its light, fluffy snow texture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pulp and helps stabilise the whisked mixture as it is added.

The step that matters

Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks. Egg white must be whisked until it holds stiff peaks before folding; under-whisked white collapses into the pulp and the dish loses its airy lightness. Cooled apple also needs to be fully cooled so it does not melt the foam.

Swap the apple

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

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

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