Name: Apricot Sherbet
Ingredients: 1 pint canned apricots, pureed; 1 pint sugar; 1 pint milk; 1 pint water

Why it works: Apricot and milk 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 ↓

Apricot Sherbet

Ingredients

1 pint canned apricots, pureed
1 pint sugar
1 pint milk
1 pint water

Directions

Prepare

Puree the canned apricots through a sieve.
In a bowl, mix the apricot puree, sugar, milk, and water.

Freeze

Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

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.

Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

Canned apricots: Provide the fruit flavour and most of the body of the sherbet.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and softens the texture by keeping ice crystals small.
Milk: Adds creaminess and mellows the fruit's acidity.