Name: Apricot Water Ice
Ingredients: 18 ripe apricots; ½ pint of water; 1 pint of syrup; 3 drops of essence of kernels

Why it works: Apricot and syrup work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 451 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot Water Ice

Ingredients

18 ripe apricots
½ pint of water
1 pint of syrup
3 drops of essence of kernels

Directions

Make the mixture

Pulse the apricots until smooth.
Combine the apricot pulp with water and syrup.
Add the essence of kernels and mix well.

Freeze

Freeze the mixture until solid.

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 + syruptop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots: Provide the fruit flavour and the pulp that gives the ice its body.
Water: Forms the ice crystals that make up the frozen base.
Syrup: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer.
Essence of kernels: Adds a concentrated aroma and flavour in only a few drops.

“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.