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Dessert

Jellied Apricots

A gelatinous dessert made with apricots, sugar, wine, and citrus, set in a mold and served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Jellied Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 15 minutes, then dissolve it in boiling water.

  2. Add sugar, wine, orange juice, and lemon juice to the mixture and strain it into a circular mold that has been wet with cold water to a depth of ½ inch.

  3. Place the mold in ice water.

Set and assemble

  1. Once the mixture is chilled, add the drained halves of canned apricots.

  2. Insert a blanched and toasted almond into the seed cavity of each apricot, cut side down.

  3. Pour the remaining mixture over the apricots and let it stand to harden.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill thoroughly, then turn out onto a serving platter and serve with apricot sauce.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Orange + apricottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Sherry + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds flavour and a little liquid to the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the acidity of the juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.
Orange juice
Adds fruity flavour and liquid to the jelly.
Canned apricots
Provide the fruit flavour and visible centrepiece set in the jelly.

The step that matters

Chilling the mixture before adding the apricots. If the gelatine mixture is still warm or too liquid, the apricots will float or shift instead of staying suspended. Gelatine needs to reach a slightly thickened, syrupy state before fruit is added, so the pieces stay where they are placed and the almonds remain in position.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, orange, sugar, apricot, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, orange, sugar, apricot, almond. 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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