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Dessert

Apricot Souffle

A chilled, set dessert of apricot pulp and custard, lightly thickened with gelatine and molded.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup and apricots

  1. Halve the apricots and remove the stones.

  2. Boil the sugar in the water to create a syrup.

  3. Add the apricots; remove 6 halves when partially cooked and the rest when soft.

  4. Pass the soft apricots through a fine sieve.

Set and serve

  1. Line a mold with jelly and decorate it with the partially cooked apricots.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in a little hot water.

  3. Mix the apricot pulp with custard, add sugar and lemon juice to taste, then strain in the gelatine.

  4. Mix quickly and thoroughly, then pour into the prepared mold.

  5. Keep on ice until firm, about 2 hours.

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

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

  2. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Gelatine
Sets the pulp into a firm, sliceable soufflé as it cools.
Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and the pulp that gives body to the soufflé.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and the final mixture, balancing the fruit's tartness.
Custard (in the method)
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the apricot pulp.

The step that matters

Mix quickly and thoroughly, then pour into the prepared mold.. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so delay can leave lumps of set gelatine and an uneven texture. Thorough mixing distributes the gelatine evenly before it firms.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apricot. 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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