Sambuk (самбук, apple meringue mousse)

The strange little miracle is that a tray of collapsed baked apples becomes a bowl of pale air. You scrape the soft flesh from the skins, whip it with sugar and egg white until it shines, then fold in just enough gelatin to teach it how to stand. Not rubber. Not jelly. A mousse with a backbone.

This is an old-fashioned Ukrainian dessert for the end of a crowded table, when the holubtsi have done their work and nobody wants cake but everyone still wants something sweet. Apples are the sensible fruit here: cheap, generous, available through winter, and better once baked until their smell changes from sharp cellar fruit to honey and peel. Aunt Nadia wrote only "good sour apples, bake soft, beat well," which is exactly useful and also not enough, so I learned the rest with a mixer screaming on the counter and a bowl too small for my optimism.

The one thing that decides the dish is the apple puree. It must be thick, not watery, because water gives you foam that weeps by morning. Bake the apples instead of boiling them; the oven drives off moisture and deepens the flavor while you do almost nothing.

Serve it cold, in little glass cups or one generous bowl, with a spoonful of smetana if you like that sour edge. It should tremble when you move it. Then it should vanish.