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Apple Snow
Whites 3 eggs 3/4 cup apple pulp Powdered sugar.
Pare, quarter, and core four sour apples, steam until soft, and rub through sieve; there should be three-fourths cup apple pulp. Beat on a platter whites of eggs until stiff (using wire whisk), add gradually apple sweetened to taste, and continue beating. Pile lightly on glass dish, chill, and serve with Boiled Custard.
The apple pulp is cooked, but the egg whites that make up the bulk of this dessert are never heated at any stage, and the finished snow is chilled and served as is.
- The uncooked whites are the problemThree raw whites are beaten with cooked apple pulp and then held cold until served. Nothing in the method brings the egg to a temperature that would kill Salmonella, which can be present in the white as well as the yolk, and the dish then sits chilling before it is eaten.
- Chilling is not a safeguardRefrigeration slows bacterial growth but does not eliminate it. If you want a fruit snow, use a current recipe built for it.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period the term usually means finely ground granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. The quantity is left to taste, which is typical for a dessert meant to be judged against the sharpness of the fruit.
- Sour applesThe recipe calls for genuinely tart apples, and the sharpness of the fruit is what the sweetening is judged against. Sweeter modern dessert varieties will give a blander result.
- Boiled CustardThe accompanying sauce is a stirred egg custard cooked over water, a separate recipe elsewhere in the book. Unlike the snow itself, it is brought to temperature during cooking.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; three whites and three-quarters of a cup of pulp would make a light dessert for roughly four.