Skip to main content
Dessert

Chartreuse of Apricots

A gelatin dessert made with apricots, sugar, water, wine, gelatine, egg whites, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Chartreuse of Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Turn out the contents of the tin of apricots into a saucepan.

  2. Add sugar and water, then bring to a boil.

  3. Strain off the syrup and remove the kernels and outer skin from the apricots.

  4. Let the apricots cool.

Make the jelly

  1. Soak gelatine in a little water, then add to 1 pint of the syrup and boil.

  2. Clarify the mixture with egg whites.

Build the mould

  1. Pour a little jelly into a larger mould and layer with apricot slices and split kernels.

  2. Cover with more jelly to create a smooth surface and set in ice.

  3. Once firm, place a smaller mould inside the larger one, ensuring even spacing.

  4. Fill the space with apricot slices and remaining jelly until full.

  5. Set the mould on ice and whip cream with dissolved isinglass.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

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

  4. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Gelatine
Sets the syrup into a firm, sliceable jelly that holds the apricots in place.
Egg whites
Gather impurities during clarifying, leaving the jelly clear and bright.
Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and the set-in pieces visible in the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the jelly.

The step that matters

Clarify the mixture with egg whites. Egg whites must be whisked into the warm syrup and heated gently so they coagulate and trap cloudy particles. If the mixture boils hard or is not strained carefully, the jelly stays cloudy and the set is less clear.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, egg, 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.

You might also like

Apricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipesMixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes