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Dessert

Apple Cream

A chilled apple sauce dessert topped with whipped cream and red jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple cream

  1. In a bowl, combine the apple sauce and sweetener.

  2. Add the egg whites, salt, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Beat the mixture until stiff enough to stand. Chill on ice.

Serve

  1. Serve in tall parfait glasses topped with whipped cream and dots of red jelly.

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Apple sauce
Forms the base of the cream and provides moisture and mild sweetness.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam that gives the cream its light, airy structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture until stiff enough to stand. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks; under-beaten whites stay runny and the cream will not hold its airy shape. Over-beating can make the foam grainy and cause it to weep.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, lemon, cream. 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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