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Dessert

Apricots Jellied

A gelatin dessert made with canned apricots, sugar, gelatin, citrus juices, apricot liquor, and garnished with toasted almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Apricots Jellied

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Drain the canned apricots, reserving the juice.

  2. Soak the gelatin in ½ cup cold water.

  3. Dissolve the soaked gelatin in 1½ cups boiling water.

  4. Add the sugar, orange juice, lemon juice, and apricot liquor to the gelatin mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture and pour it into a mold to a depth of 1 inch.

  6. Let it harden in a pan of ice water.

Set the apricots

  1. Place halves of apricots in the gelatin, with a toasted almond in the cavity of each half, cut side down.

  2. Cover with the gelatin mixture and let it stand to harden.

  3. Add another layer of apricots and the remaining gelatin mixture.

  4. Chill thoroughly, then turn onto a serving platter and serve with apricot sauce.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Apricot + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly that holds the apricots in place.
Apricots
Provide the fruit flavor and soft texture within the set jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and sharpens the sweetness.
Orange juice
Contributes fruity sweetness and acidity to the gelatin liquid.
Apricot liquor
Adds concentrated apricot aroma and flavor to the gelatin.

The step that matters

Let the gelatin harden in ice water before adding the apricots. Gelatin sets only when cold, and a layer that is too warm or too thin will not firm evenly. Chilling it to a set layer first keeps the apricots and almonds from floating or sinking unevenly in the next layers.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, sugar, gelatin, orange, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar, gelatin, orange, almond. 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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