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Apricot Choux Cakes

Small cakes made from choux pastry filled with apricot marmalade and glazed with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Choux Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and fill

  1. Butter the tartelet moulds.

  2. Fill each mould with choux paste.

  3. Beat the egg and brush it over the filled moulds.

  4. Use your finger to make a hollow in each tartelet and fill it with a teaspoon of apricot marmalade.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sugar and glaze the cakes after baking.

  3. Serve hot on a napkin.

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

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + apricottop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,712 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

Choux paste
Forms the light, hollow pastry shell that puffs and holds the marmalade filling.
Egg
Brushed on top, it browns the surface and gives the pastry a glossy finish.
Apricot marmalade
Fills the hollow, adding fruity sweetness and moisture to the baked cake.

The step that matters

Make the hollow before baking. Choux paste rises mainly from steam inside the dough. A well-formed hollow gives the paste room to puff and keeps the marmalade contained, so the cakes bake evenly instead of collapsing or leaking.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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