Apple Fluff
A simple dessert is apple fluff. For this grate I large or 2 small tart pared apples, dropping the pulp, as fast as grated, into a bowl containing ½ cupful of fine granulated sugar, with which it is to be stirred-this prevents discoloration. Add 1 teaspoonful of lemon juice, then drop in the unbeaten whites of 2 eggs and begin to whip with a flat wire beater. Use long strokes and beat steadily; the bowl needs to be a large one for the mixture will swell to several times its first proportions. When very light, fluffy and quite stiff, heap in serving glasses and stand in a cold place. This should not be made more than an hour before the meal; just before serving drop ½ teaspoonful of any bright colored jelly on top.
This is a raw-egg-white dessert: the whites are whipped with grated apple and served cold, with no cooking step at any point. That is the problem.
- The whites are never heatedNothing in the method brings the eggs to a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and there is no acid or alcohol level here that does the work either. The teaspoonful of lemon juice is for flavour and colour, not safety.
- It sits at the wrong temperatureThe mixture is heaped into glasses and held in "a cold place" for up to an hour. In the period this was written, "a cold place" meant cool rather than refrigerated. Any organism present has time and a favourable medium in which to multiply.
- Who it fails hardestUncooked egg-white desserts are specifically advised against for pregnant women, young children, the elderly, and anyone immunosuppressed. A whipped dessert gives no visual or textural warning that anything is wrong.
- Volume is not donenessThe recipe's only test is that the foam be "very light, fluffy and quite stiff." That indicates aeration only, and can lead a cook to assume the mixture has been transformed in some way it has not.
- If you want this dessertUse a current recipe for apple snow built on pasteurised egg white or a cooked meringue base, and follow its temperatures.
Apple fluff belongs to a large family of eighteenth- to early twentieth-century "snows" and "fluffs" — fruit pulp or juice beaten into raw egg white until it multiplied in volume, then served in glasses. They were economical: one apple, half a cup of sugar and two egg whites would fill several dishes. The "flat wire beater" the author specifies is a flat, non-rotary whisk worked with long strokes rather than a rotary crank. The instruction to drop the grated apple straight into sugar does what the recipe claims for it — the sugar coats the cut cells and slows the enzymatic browning that otherwise discolours grated apple within minutes. The bright dab of jelly on top supplied a spot of colour on an otherwise very pale dish.