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Dessert

Apricots and Cream

A frozen dessert made with apricots, cream, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apricots and Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald 1½ pints of cream with the broken cinnamon and grated lemon peel.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until light and creamy.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the hot cream and cook for 1 minute longer.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Cool it.

Freeze and serve

  1. Freeze.

  2. Fold in the remaining pint of whipped cream.

  3. Let it stand for 2 hours.

  4. Serve with canned apricots over and around the cream.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apricot + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they cook with the hot cream.
Cream
Provides fat and body, giving the frozen dessert a smooth, rich texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the frozen cream.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg mixture into the hot cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; cooking too hard can curdle the custard. Keep the heat moderate and stir while the mixture thickens.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream, lemon, cinnamon. 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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