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Sauce

Apricot Sauce

A sauce made from apricot marmalade, butter, water, and Kirsch, served with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Apricot Sauce

Why it works: Apricot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apricot Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine apricot marmalade, fresh butter, and water.

  2. Heat over medium, stirring with a wooden spoon until it begins to boil.

  3. Remove from heat, add Kirsch (or brandy), and let it boil once.

  4. Serve with apricot or apple dumplings.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Apricot + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

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

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Apricot marmalade
Provides the fruit flavour and sweetness that forms the body of the sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Kirsch
Adds a distinct aromatic, fruity note to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the Kirsch off the heat. Alcohol added to a hot liquid can flare up, and boiling it for a long time drives off much of its aroma. Removing the pan from the heat before adding it and letting it boil only once keeps the flavour bright.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, brandy):

  1. Apricotthe original
  2. Currantfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, brandy. 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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