Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓
Apple Charlotte
Ingredients
Directions
Parboil the cored apples in a little syrup made with sugar and lemon juice.
Bake the tartlets until lightly colored.
Dilute apricot jam with some of the syrup and use it to mask the apples in the tartlets.
Place a preserved cherry in the center of each tartlet.
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.
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Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together777 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
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Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,098 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,630 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, apricot):
- Pearfits better
- Peachfits better
- Plumfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, apricot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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