Apple Snow
Pare and slice one dozen large apples; stew them perfectly done, and run through a colander. Then add whites of twelve eggs, beaten to a stiff froth, and one pound white sugar. Eat with sweet cream.
Apple snow is a raw-egg dish: the whipped whites are folded into cooled apple pulp and served without any further cooking. That is the whole problem with it.
- The whites are never cookedNothing in the method brings the egg whites to a temperature that would kill Salmonella. The stewed apple is passed through a colander and the froth is folded in with no further heating, and nothing in the recipe reheats the mixture. Twelve raw whites in a single bowl also means twelve chances that one contaminated egg spoils the lot.
- Served with raw cream on top"Eat with sweet cream" means fresh, unsoured cream, which in this period would generally not have been pasteurised. Raw dairy carries its own pathogen load and would compound the risk from the uncooked whites.
- No acid, no sugar syrup, no cooking stageSome later meringue desserts get a measure of safety from hot sugar syrup beaten into the whites, or from a spell in the oven. This one has neither: the sugar is simply added to the mixture. There is no step that would make it safe.
- Held at room temperatureA bowl of aerated egg white and sweetened fruit pulp sits in the danger zone for as long as it is left out. Refrigeration slows bacterial growth but does not undo contamination already present.
- If you want to make apple snowUse a current recipe written for pasteurised or cooked meringue. Do not adapt this one by eye.
- Reading the quantitiesFor context only: a dozen large apples is roughly four to six pounds, and a pound of white sugar is about two and a quarter cups. The quantities are large enough to serve a table rather than one or two people.
Apple snow belongs to a family of English "snow" and "fool" desserts that goes back well before the American cookbooks that carried it over — whipped cream or whipped egg white lightened with fruit pulp, prized because it looked like a drift of snow on the table and cost little beyond eggs and orchard fruit. The sheer number of eggs says something about the period: a household with its own hens could treat a dozen whites as an ordinary outlay. Recipes of this kind assumed a cook who could beat whites stiff by hand, and many of them ask only for "a stiff froth" and leave the rest to judgement.