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Dessert

Apricot a LA Neige

A rice pudding shaped like an apricot, steamed and served with apricot sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and apricot work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 353 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apricot a LA Neige

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil rice for 15 minutes or steam until tender.

  2. Wring out small pudding cloths from hot water and lay them over a half-pint bowl.

  3. Spread rice to a thickness of ⅓ inch over the cloth.

Shape the pudding

  1. Place an apricot in the center, filling the cavity with rice.

  2. Draw the cloth around the apricot, covering it smoothly with rice, and tie it.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the cloth and place the balls on a platter.

  3. For the sauce, boil together apricot juice, sugar, and cornstarch 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. Rice + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

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

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 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

Rice
Forms the tender, starchy body that holds the shape of each pudding ball.
Apricot juice
Adds fruity flavor and moisture to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the sauce and balances the fruit's tartness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the apricot sauce as its starch granules swell when boiled.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the liquid reaches a boil, as its starch granules swell and bind the liquid. Stopping early leaves a thin, runny sauce.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, 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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