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Apple Snow
Pare, core and bring to boil in as little water as possible six tart apple cool, strain, beat well, and add the well-whipped whites of three eggs, sweeten to taste, beat well until a dish of snow is the result, flavor with lemon or manilla, or add the grated rind of a lemon; serve with sweetened cream. Or, make custard of yolks, sugar, and a pint milk, place in a dish, and drop the froth on it in large flakes. - Mrs. T. J. Buxton, Minneapolis, Minn.
A straightforward apple foam that lives or dies on how dry the apple pulp is. Wet, loose apple will deflate the whites no matter how long you beat.
- The hinge: cook the apples drySix tart apples in "as little water as possible" means barely a few tablespoons, lid on, until they collapse. If the pulp is at all watery, boil it down uncovered and cool it completely before it meets the whites.
- "Strain" means sievePress the cooked apple through a fine sieve or food mill rather than pouring off liquid. You want a smooth, thick puree with no skin flecks or fibre; six apples will give you somewhere around one and a half to two cups, depending on their size and how far the pulp is reduced.
- Apple choiceGranny Smith, Bramley or any firm tart cooking apple. Modern sweet dessert apples (Gala, Fuji) give a flat, cloying snow and need extra lemon.
- "Manilla"Almost certainly a misprint for vanilla. Half a teaspoon of extract, or the grated zest of one lemon, is enough for this quantity.
- Raw whitesThe whites are never cooked here. If you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized egg whites in carton form, which whip perfectly well for this.
- Sweetening"To taste" lands around 1/4 to 1/3 cup of sugar for tart apples. Add it to the whites as you beat, a spoonful at a time, so it dissolves rather than weeping later.
- Method orderThe recipe does whip the whites separately ("well-whipped whites") before they meet the apple, but then directs you to beat the two together. Folding the cold apple into firm whites a third at a time, rather than beating on after they are combined, keeps the froth stiffer.
- The custard variantThree yolks to a pint of milk is a thin pouring custard. Cook it over low heat, stirring, until it coats a spoon at about 175F, and chill it before spooning the snow on top.
- Yield and timingServes four to six, and it is best assembled shortly before serving. Apple snow weeps and slumps if held long, and will not survive overnight in the refrigerator.
Apple snow belongs to a family of English "snow" dishes going back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when cooks beat cream, wine or fruit pulp into standing froths with bundles of rods or aromatic branches. By the time The Dixie Cook Book was assembled in the 1880s the dish was a familiar cold sweet, cheap and light. The second option given here, dropping the froth in flakes over a boiled custard made from the leftover yolks, is the same thrift that produced floating island and snow eggs: nothing in a three-egg recipe goes to waste. The attribution to Mrs. T. J. Buxton of Minneapolis is typical of the book, which gathered contributions from subscribers well beyond the South despite its title.