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Dessert

Apple Float

A custard dessert with apples, egg whites, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Apple Float

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk.

  2. Mix in the corn starch and egg yolks until thickened.

  3. Let the custard cool.

Make the apple topping

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Fold the chopped or mashed apples into the beaten egg whites.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread the apple mixture over the top.

  2. Dot with jelly.

  3. Flavor with vanilla extract.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whipped whites form a light foam that holds the apples.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the egg yolks and corn starch thicken into custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and yolk mixture as it heats, giving the custard body.
Apples
Add moisture, tartness and fruity flavor to the light egg white topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Stiff whites trap air and hold their shape. Overbeating makes them grainy and dry, while deflating them when folding in the apples makes the topping dense and runny.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, corn, vanilla. 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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