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Apple Float
Rub a sufficient quantity of stewed apples through a coarse sieve, or mash them thoroughly. Sweeten with sugar and flavor with nutmeg, and add a spoonful at a time to the well-beaten whites of eggs (four eggs to each quart of apples used). Put in some cream and season with nutmeg at the bottom of the dish, placing the apples on top. Put in the oven for twenty minutes, and serve either hot or cold.
A meringue-lightened apple purée floated on sweetened cream and set briefly in the oven. The recipe gives no temperature and no dish size, so the two things to fix before you start are heat and proportion.
- Oven heatNo temperature is stated. Treat it as a moderate oven, 350F, for the twenty minutes given; the aim is to set and lightly colour the meringue, not to cook the fruit further.
- ProportionFour egg whites to a quart of apple purée is the only firm ratio here. A quart of purée is roughly 3 lb of apples before peeling and coring; once folded with the whites it swells considerably, so allow a dish larger than 2 quarts, with the cream beneath. Six to eight servings is a reasonable estimate, though the recipe gives none.
- Stewed applesCook peeled, cored apples with barely any water until collapsing, then sieve or mash. The purée must be thick and cool before it meets the whites; warm or wet apple will slacken the foam immediately.
- Folding, not stirring"Add a spoonful at a time to the well-beaten whites" is the hinge of the dish. The apple goes into the whites in small additions, folded gently, so the mixture stays aerated. Reverse the order and you get sweetened apple sauce with froth on it.
- Beat the whites properlyFirm peaks, and a pinch of cream of tartar helps stability, though the book does not mention it. Sweeten the apple rather than the whites, as written.
- The cream layerThis is plain liquid cream at the bottom of the dish, seasoned with nutmeg and lightly sweetened if you like; the apple sits on it and "floats." It will warm through in the oven but stays a sauce, not a custard, so serve with a spoon that reaches the bottom.
- Nutmeg twiceNutmeg goes into both the apple and the cream. Freshly grated makes a real difference at these quantities; pre-ground is flat by comparison.
- Hot or coldServed cold the meringue weeps a little after an hour or two, so chill no more than that. Hot, it wants to go straight from oven to table.
"Float" was a standing name in nineteenth-century American cookery for a dessert in which a light froth of beaten egg white — sometimes flavoured with fruit purée, sometimes with wine — was spooned onto a pool of cream or thin custard, so that it appeared to float. Apple snow, apple float and floating island all belong to the same family of cheap, showy sweets built on whipped whites, and they turn up constantly in nineteenth-century household manuals because they use windfall fruit and no expensive gelatine or chocolate. Its appearance among the Waldorf recipes is a reminder that Oscar Tschirky's book gathered plain domestic dishes alongside the hotel's grander cooking.