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Dessert

Apricot Ice

A frozen dessert made from apricot jam, cream, sugar, and liqueur, churned and frozen with ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mix the apricot jam with the cream until well combined.

  2. Add more sugar if desired and the ratafia.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Place it in a freezing pot and set it in an ice tub for 30 minutes before starting to churn.

Churn and freeze

  1. Pound the ice into small pieces and mix it with coarse sea salt.

  2. Churn the mixture until it sticks to the sides of the pot, then scrape it down.

  3. Continue churning until it is fully frozen and thick.

  4. Leave it covered in ice for another 30 minutes.

Mould and serve

  1. Fill the molds with the ice and place writing paper on top and bottom to prevent sticking.

  2. Bury the molds in ice until ready to serve.

  3. When serving, wash the molds with cold water to help the ice release smoothly.

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

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

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

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

  3. Apricot + creamtop 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

Apricot jam
Supplies fruit flavour and sugar, adding sweetness and a soft, fruity body to the ice cream.
Cream
Provides fat that makes the ice cream rich and smooth, keeping ice crystals small.
Ratafia
Adds a liqueur aroma and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.

The step that matters

Churning until it sticks, then scraping down. Churning while the mixture freezes onto the pot walls and scraping it back in keeps ice crystals small. Continuing until thick and fully frozen gives a smooth texture rather than a grainy one.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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