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Pommes a La Chantilly
1020. In a quart of good thick and very sweet cream, put the whites of four eggs strained, beat it until it becomes a stiff snow; then, while still beating it, add quite a pound of pulped apples, and a quarter of a pound of finely powdered sifted white sugar. Pile it high upon a dessert dish, and serve.
A Victorian apple snow: sweetened cream and raw egg white beaten together, folded with apple pulp and heaped up as a dessert. The egg whites are never cooked at any stage, which is the reason for the warning above.
- Raw egg white, never heatedThe whites go in uncooked and the finished pile is served cold, so nothing in the method reaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella. Shell eggs beaten raw into a dessert that sits at room temperature on a dessert dish are outside current safe practice, particularly for children, older diners, pregnant women and anyone immune-compromised. If you want an apple snow, use a present-day recipe written for pasteurised whites.
- A quart of cream"A quart of cream" -- An imperial quart is 40 imperial fluid ounces, closer to five US cups than four. With a pound of apple pulp on top of that, the recipe fills a very large bowl and would serve a large party.
- "Quite a pound"Means a full pound, or a little over, rather than a scant one. The apples are understood to be already stewed and sieved to a smooth pulp and cooled; the book does not spell this out.
- Sugar quantitiesA quarter of a pound is 4 oz, about half a cup of caster sugar.
- "A stiff snow"Cream and egg white beaten together will take up a great deal of air and then collapse quickly once fruit puree is folded in.
- Apple choiceA cooking apple that breaks down completely, such as Bramley, gives the pulp the method assumes. Dessert apples tend to hold their shape.
Anything "a la Chantilly" in a Victorian dessert list means sweetened whipped cream, a usage traced by tradition to the kitchens of the Chateau de Chantilly north of Paris and often attributed to Francois Vatel, maitre d'hotel there, though the attribution is legend rather than documented record. The dish itself sits in an older English line of apple snows, in which stewed apple pulp was beaten with egg white into a froth and piled up high on a dish, a form recorded in English receipt books well before the French name was attached. The instruction to pile it high is the point of the dish: height and volume are the whole display.