Name: Apricot Toast
Ingredients: dried apricots; sugar; slices of zwieback; hot liquid

Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Toast

Ingredients

dried apricots
sugar
slices of zwieback
hot liquid

Directions

Prepare the apricots

Stew the dried apricots until soft.
Rub the apricots through a fine colander to remove skins.
Add sugar to sweeten the apricot mixture.

Assemble and serve

Soften slices of zwieback in hot liquid.
Serve the sweetened apricot mixture on the softened zwieback.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

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 flavor and the soft pulp that forms the topping.
Sugar: Sweetens the apricot mixture, balancing the fruit's natural tartness.
Slices of zwieback: Act as a dry, absorbent base that softens when soaked in hot liquid.

“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.