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Dessert

Apple Snow

A chilled dessert of cooked apples, egg whites, sugar, candied peel, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, core, and slice the apples.

  2. Put the sliced apples into a saucepan with water, sherry, caster sugar, and thinly cut rind of 1 lemon.

Make the snow

  1. Cook gently until tender, then pass through a fine sieve.

  2. Add the stiffly whisked egg whites and whisk until firm.

  3. Stir in the candied peel and serve in small glasses.

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

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

  3. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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
Cook down into a soft pulp that forms the body of the dish.
Egg whites
Whisked until stiff, they lighten the purée into a airy, fluffy texture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps keep the whisked mixture stable.
Sherry
Adds a sharp, aromatic note that balances the sweetness of the fruit.
Candied peel
Contributes chewy texture and concentrated sweet citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg whites. Egg whites must be whisked until stiff but not dry, and folded in while the purée is still soft. Over-whisked whites turn grainy and collapse, while under-whisked whites deflate, so the snow loses its airy lightness.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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