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Dessert

Apple Frost

Apple Frost is a dessert made with cream, lemon, eggs, apples, and jelly powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and apple 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 Frost

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream base

  1. Beat the cream until stiff and sweeten to taste.

  2. Lightly beat the egg whites and add the lemon juice.

  3. Slowly whip the lemon-egg mixture into the cream.

Finish and set

  1. Prepare the jelly powder and let it cool slightly.

  2. Mix the jelly powder with the cream mixture, beating thoroughly.

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. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cream + appletop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Cream
Whipped into a stiff base that gives the frost its light, airy body.
Eggs
Whites are beaten to add foam and lightness to the cream mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Jelly powder
Gelatin-based setting agent that firms the mixture as it cools.
Apples
Grated apple adds fruit flavour and moisture to the frost.

The step that matters

Slowly whip the lemon-egg mixture into the cream. Adding the egg-lemon mixture too quickly can curdle or deflate the whipped cream, so it should be folded in gradually to keep the mixture smooth and airy.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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