Name: Duchesse Cake with Pur&E of Apricots
Ingredients: apricot jam; sugar; angelica leaves; dried cherries; Jordan almonds, blanched and split; 1 pint fresh cream; ½ pint red currant jelly; puree of apples; pastry custard

Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Duchesse Cake with Pur&E of Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Rub apricot jam through a fine sieve and heat it in a small saucepan.
Trim the bottoms of the Genoese borders so they stand level.
Mask the surface of each border with hot apricot jam using a knife or pastry brush.
Roll the outside of each border in sugar to adhere, leaving the top plain.
Form a wreath on top of each border with angelica leaves and dried cherries or split Jordan almonds with a cherry between each.
Whip the cream until firm and rub the red currant jelly through a wire sieve onto a plate.
Place some apple puree in the centers of the cake borders.
Add pastry custard in the center of the apple puree, followed by a spoonful of red currant jelly, and repeat the layers until piled high.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together777 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Angelica + almondtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together135 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Almond + red curranttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together90 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Apricot + red curranttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, sugar, angelica, almond, cream, apple):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Peachfits better
Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar, angelica, almond, cream, apple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.