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Dessert

Floating Island of Apples

A dessert of baked apples folded with beaten egg whites, served over Savoy cakes and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Floating Island of Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple pulp

  1. Bake or scald the apples until soft.

  2. Let the apples cool.

  3. Peel the apples and pulp them through a sieve.

  4. Beat the apple pulp with sugar to taste.

Make the fluff

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add a small quantity of rose water or lemon essence to the pulp, mixing in gradually.

  3. Fold the beaten egg whites into the apple pulp until light and fluffy.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture heaped on a dish with Savoy cakes and jelly underneath and around it.

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. Apple + rosetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

  5. Egg + rosetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 and pulped to form the light, flavourful base of the dish.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam that gives the mixture its light, fluffy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and balances its tartness.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the apple pulp. Stiff whites hold air that gives the dish its lightness. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing and the mixture from deflating.

Swap the apple

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

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

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