Skip to main content
Dessert

Frozen Apricot

A chilled dessert made from canned apricots, sugar, and cream.

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

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Frozen Apricot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Drain the apricots.

  2. Add enough water to the syrup to make 4 cups and cook with sugar for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Press the apricots through a sieve.

  5. Cool the mixture.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze until it reaches a soft mush.

  2. Fold in the whipped cream.

  3. Continue freezing until firm.

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

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

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

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

  3. Apricot + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and body once pressed into a purée.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer when frozen.
Cream
Adds fat and air, making the frozen dessert smooth and creamy rather than icy.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream at the soft mush stage. If the mixture is frozen too hard it will not blend evenly with the cream, and if it is too liquid the whipped cream will deflate. Folding at a soft mush keeps the cream's air and gives an even, light texture.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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.

You might also like

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