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Dessert

Apple Meringues

A dessert of stewed apples topped with glossy meringue baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Meringues

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew the apples in sugar until soft and form a pyramid on a serving dish.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sifted sugar until glossy.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the meringue over the stewed apples.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 2 hours.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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
Form the soft base that the meringue sits on and adds fruit flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets in the oven to form the crisp meringue topping.
Sifted sugar
Stabilises the whipped whites and gives the meringue its glossy, sweet structure.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to a stable foam before the sugar is added. Any trace of fat or yolk can stop them whipping, and under-beaten whites will collapse in the oven, leaving a flat, weeping meringue.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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