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Apricot Sauce

A sweet sauce made from apricot pulp, sugar, and thickened cream or milk.

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

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Apricot Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the cream or milk in a saucepan until hot.

  2. Mix the corn-starch with a little cold milk until smooth, then add to the hot cream or milk and cook for 15 minutes.

Make the apricot syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water in another pot for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the apricot pulp to the boiled sugar mixture, beat well, and combine with the cooked milk.

  3. Place the inner kettle in a pan of cold water and beat for 10 minutes, then let cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Corn + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  4. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Cream + apricottop 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

Cream or milk
Provides richness and body as the base of the sauce.
Corn-starch
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apricot.
Apricot pulp
Supplies the apricot flavour and fruity body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the cornstarch mixture fully. Starch only thickens properly once it has been heated long enough to swell and gelatinize, so the sauce needs enough cooking time to reach full thickness.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, corn, 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.

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