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Apple Snow--No. 1
Core, quarter, and steam 3 large sour apples. Rub through sieve, cool; whip whites 3 eggs to very stiff froth with 1/2 cupful powdered sugar, gradually add apple, and whip long time till white and stiff. Pile in dish; garnish with dots currant jelly.
Apple snow is a raw-egg-white foam, served cold and never cooked at any stage. That single fact governs everything about it today.
- Why it failsThe three egg whites are whipped, folded with cooled apple pulp, and served as-is. Nothing in the method brings the eggs to a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and the finished dish then sits at room temperature while it is piled and garnished, which is where the risk compounds. Use a current recipe if you want a dish of this type.
- The powdered sugar does nothing protectiveNeither the sugar concentration nor the pH of an apple foam is anywhere near enough to be a control measure.
- "Sour apples"The period term means a firm cooking apple with high acid, not a spoiled one -- Rhode Island Greening, Newtown Pippin, or in a modern market a Granny Smith or Bramley. Sweet dessert apples cook down slack and taste flat here.
- Powdered sugarIn these books powdered sugar usually means finely ground granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar sold now. Half a cupful is about 100 g of granulated, less by weight if you measure modern confectioners' sugar.
- Rub through sieveSteamed apple pushed through a fine sieve gives a smooth, dry purée with no skin or fibre. A food mill does the same work; a blender produces a looser pulp that would slacken the foam.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly was a standard larder item and was used across this period as a sharp red garnish and as a sauce for game. Redcurrant jelly is still widely sold.
Apple snow appears in English cookery books from at least the eighteenth century onward and was a fixture of American household manuals by the time this one was compiled -- cheap, showy, and made from ingredients most kitchens had in autumn. It belongs to a large family of "snows" and "whips" built on hand-whisked egg white. The instruction to "whip long time" is the whole trick, and the numbering of this recipe implies at least one further version in the book. Recipes of this kind fell out of general use over the twentieth century as public health advice on uncooked eggs tightened, and the ones that survive in print now are commonly set with gelatin or built on a cooked base.