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Fresh Apricot Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with apricots, powdered sugar, and egg whites, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fresh Apricot Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the apricots

  1. Place the apricots in an earthen jar and put the jar in a copper pot filled with water.

  2. Cover the jar tightly and simmer for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Remove the apricots and strain them through a sieve until the next morning.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the strained apricots with 5 pounds of powdered sugar using two spoons.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the apricot mixture.

Bake and store

  1. Fill paper molds with the mixture and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Store the biscuits in a dry box.

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.

  1. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Apricot + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,712 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and the moisture that forms the biscuit body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps it thicken into a firm, stable paste.
Egg whites
Whisked to stiff foam, they lighten the mixture and help it set when baked.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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