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Dessert

Apricot Mould

A chilled dessert made from apricots, sherry, gelatine, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Drain the apricots in a sieve.

  2. Reduce the syrup by boiling until it is half its original quantity.

  3. Pass the fruit through a sieve.

  4. Mix the fruit with the reduced syrup.

Set and serve

  1. Add the sherry and the dissolved gelatine to the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mould with an open center.

  3. Once set, turn out the mould.

  4. Fill the center with whipped cream.

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. Apricot + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and body of the mould.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, sweet-sharp flavour to the fruit.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, soft texture against the set fruit.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before it is mixed in, otherwise it sets in specks or unevenly. The mixture should also be cool enough not to melt the set gel once poured, so it firms evenly in the mould.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, 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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