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Dessert

Apricot Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from stewed apricots, sugar, cream, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Apricot Ice Cream

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 ↓

Apricot Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricot base

  1. Stew the dried apricots in 1 quart of water until perfectly soft.

  2. Add 3 cups of sugar and cook until the fruit and syrup look clear.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and cool it on ice.

Make the ice cream

  1. Mix 1 quart of cream and 1 pint of milk together and whip for 15 minutes until very cold.

  2. Slowly add the cooled apricot mixture and mix well.

  3. Place the mixture on ice for 3 hours to ripen.

  4. Freeze the mixture 30 minutes before serving.

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

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

  2. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and, once stewed and strained, the body of the base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when cooked with the fruit, helps form a syrup that softens the texture.
Cream
Adds fat, giving the ice cream a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds liquid and dairy solids that contribute to a lighter, creamier texture alongside the cream.

The step that matters

Cooling the apricot mixture before combining. If the warm apricot mixture is added to the cream, the fat can soften and the mixture can curdle or melt unevenly. Chilling it on ice keeps the base cold so it freezes smoothly.

Swap the apricot

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

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

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