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Dessert

Floating Island of Apples

A dessert of apple pulp folded into meringue, served atop Savoy cakes with 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 apples

  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 meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add a small quantity of rose water or lemon essence to the egg whites.

  3. Mix the apple pulp into the egg whites gradually, beating until light and fluffy.

Assemble and serve

  1. Heap the mixture on a serving dish, placing 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
Provide the main bulk and tart, fruity flavour of the mousse-like filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the filling its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Savoy cakes
Form a dry, absorbent base and support under and around the heaped filling.

The step that matters

Mix the apple pulp into the egg whites gradually. Adding the pulp all at once or too vigorously knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the mixture loses its lightness and fluffiness. Folding in gradually keeps the foam airy.

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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