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Frozen Apricots

Frozen apricots are apricots preserved in a sugar syrup, then cooled and frozen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Frozen Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Drain the syrup from the can of apricots.

  2. Add enough water to make 1 quart and stir in 1½ cups of sugar.

  3. Heat the mixture and boil for 5 minutes.

Finish and freeze

  1. Pass the fruit through a sieve and mix it with the syrup.

  2. Let it cool and then freeze.

  3. Optionally, add a little lemon juice or replace 1 cup of water with cream before freezing.

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

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

  2. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Apricot + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,116 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Apricots
Provide the fruit flavour and body once passed through a sieve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen texture softer.
Cream
Optional; adds fat for a richer, smoother frozen texture.
Lemon juice
Optional; adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Let it cool and then freeze. Cooling the mixture fully before freezing helps it freeze more evenly, which limits the growth of large ice crystals and keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, sugar, cream):

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

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