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Dessert

Apricot Sauce

A sweet and tart sauce made from apricot jam, lemon rind, water, sugar, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Apricot Sauce

Why it works: Apricot and rum work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 149 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cut the lemon rind very thin.

  2. Combine the lemon rind, water, sugar, and jam in a saucepan.

  3. Stir over medium heat and boil for a few minutes until thick and syrupy.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat, stir in lemon juice and rum, and strain.

  2. Serve over hot puddings.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  3. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Apricot jam
Provides the main apricot flavour and sweetness, and thickens the sauce as it boils.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavour.
Rum
Adds aroma and a warm, distinctive flavour to the sauce.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce reduce to a syrupy body.

The step that matters

Boiling until thick and syrupy. Sugar and fruit solids concentrate as water evaporates, and the sauce thickens further as it cools. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin, while overcooking makes it sticky and overly sweet. Judge the texture by how it flows from a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, rum, 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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