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Dessert

Apple Snow

A dessert made from apples, egg whites, sugar, and lemon rind, folded into a frothy mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon 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 Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Place the apples in a saucepan with the lemon rind and enough water to prevent burning.

  3. Cook until the apples are tender, then remove the lemon peel.

  4. Beat the apples into a pulp and let them cool.

Make the snow

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to a strong froth.

  2. Stir the cooled apple pulp into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Add the sifted sugar and whisk until the mixture is stiff.

Serve

  1. Heap the mixture on a glass dish or serve in small glasses.

  2. Garnish with preserved barberries or colorful jelly, and serve with custards or cream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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
Cooked to a pulp, they supply the fruit flavour and the body of the snow.
Whites of 10 eggs
Whipped into a froth, they trap air and give the dish its light, airy structure.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the dish and stiffens the whipped whites, helping the mixture hold its shape.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg whites into the apple pulp. The apple pulp must be fully cooled before it is folded into the whites. Warm pulp can deflate the foam and thin the mixture, so it will not whisk up stiff.

Swap the apple

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

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

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