Why it works: Milk and apricot work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 826 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Duchess Bread
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the royal paste and drop it onto a clean surface in equal-sized round balls.
Roll each ball lightly to the length of a finger.
Place the rolled balls on a baking sheet.
Brush the tops lightly with milk.
Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.
Once baked, open the bottoms and fill with sweetmeats.
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.
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Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together826 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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