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Dessert

Apricot Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with apricots, sugar, gelatin, apricot syrup, and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 192 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Combine the can of apricots and sugar in a saucepan and boil for a few minutes.

  2. Strain off the syrup and remove any skins and stones from the apricots. Let cool.

  3. Dissolve the gelatin in a little water and add it to the pint of syrup. Boil and clarify with egg white.

Set the jelly

  1. Pour a little jelly into the bottom of a mold. When set, place a few apricots over it.

  2. Add more jelly and apricots alternately until the mold is full. Let it get very cold.

Serve

  1. Turn out of the mold and serve with whipped 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. Gelatin + syruptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the fruit pieces and flavour that are set within the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps give the jelly its flavour.
Gelatin
Sets the syrup into a firm jelly that holds its shape when turned out.
Apricot syrup
Forms the liquid base of the jelly, carrying flavour and setting with the gelatin.
Egg white (in the method)
Clarifies the jelly, collecting impurities so it sets clear.

The step that matters

Clarifying the jelly with egg white. Boiling the gelatin syrup with egg white lets impurities cling to the whites, which are then removed, leaving a clear jelly. Skipping or rushing this leaves the jelly cloudy.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gelatin, syrup, 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.

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