Skip to main content
Dessert

To Make Apricot Cakes

Apricot cakes are made by cooking apricots with sugar and water, then setting the mixture in glasses and drying it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Make Apricot Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Scald the apricots, peel them, and remove the stones.

  2. Beat the apricots in a marble mortar until smooth.

Make the paste

  1. Boil the sugar with water, skimming it well.

  2. Add the apricot pulp to the sugar mixture and simmer for 15 minutes over low heat, stirring gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into shallow flat glasses and let it cool.

Dry and finish

  1. Once set, turn them out onto glass plates and dry them in a cool oven, turning them once a day.

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).

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 becomes the body of the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, once cooked and cooled, helps the mixture set firm.

The step that matters

Simmering the apricot and sugar mixture. Stirring gently over low heat keeps the mixture from scorching and sticking. Sugar that is cooked long enough and then cooled sets into a firm, sliceable gel as it thickens.

“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.

You might also like

Apricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipesMixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes