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Dessert

Apple Snow

A layered dessert of apples, sponge cake, cream, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 395 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple pulp

  1. Peel and core the apples, then place them in a saucepan with a little water, sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  2. Cook the apples until they are soft, then press the pulp through a sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Beat the apple pulp with the egg whites until it is white and frothy.

  2. In a glass dish, layer the sponge cake and pour sherry and cream over it.

  3. Heap the apple mixture over the sponge cake as high as possible and serve immediately.

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 + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

Egg whites
Whipped into the warm apple pulp to make it light, white and frothy.
Apples
Cooked to a soft pulp that forms the main body and flavour of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Sponge cake
Soaks up the sherry and cream to form a moist base under the apple.

The step that matters

Beating the apple pulp with the egg whites. The pulp should be cooked soft and sieved smooth first, so it whips into a stable, airy foam. Lumps or excess liquid can deflate the egg white foam, and it should be served right away before it collapses.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, apple, sugar, sherry, 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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