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Dessert

Apricot -Float

A dessert made by stewing apricots with sugar, sieving, folding into beaten egg whites, and adding a thickened custard of yolks and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and milk work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 826 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apricot -Float

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apricot base

  1. Stew the apricots with sugar until soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve while hot.

  3. Let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and slowly fold into the cooled fruit.

  2. For the custard, use the egg yolks and milk, and cook until thickened.

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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and the body of the purée.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it soften during stewing.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the float its light, airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as they cook.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which sets as the yolks cook.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the fruit. Stiff whites hold air that gives the float its lightness. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing. Fold into fruit that has cooled, because heat would deflate the foam.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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