Skip to main content
Dessert

Apricot and Cottage Cheese Salad

A chilled salad of apricots, cottage cheese, and gelatin set in lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apricot and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot and Cottage Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in water.

Make the salad

  1. Cut the apricots and lightly mix them with the cottage cheese.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the syrup from the apricots and add the gelatine while hot.

  3. Add the lemon juice to the mixture.

  4. When cool, mix the gelatine with the fruit and cheese.

  5. Pour into a mold to congeal.

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

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

  2. Cottage cheese + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Apricot + cottage cheesetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

Lemon and sugar 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable salad as it cools.
Cottage cheese
Adds creamy body and mild richness that balances the sweet fruit.
Apricots
Provide fruit flavor, sweetness, and soft pieces throughout the set salad.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar and apricot syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the apricot syrup and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Add the gelatine while the syrup is hot. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before it is combined with the other ingredients. If it cools and begins to set early, it can form lumps and set unevenly. Adding it when the syrup is hot lets it disperse evenly through the mixture before the salad begins to firm.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, lemon, sugar):

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, lemon, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Lemon PieLemon Pie37 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes