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Dessert

Apricot Water Ice

A frozen dessert made from apricots, water, syrup, and bitter almond flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apricot Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the apricots without peeling them.

Make the sorbet

  1. Boil the apricots in water and syrup until soft.

  2. Add the bitter almond flavoring and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a freezer and freeze until solid.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Apricot + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + almondtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavor, and their pulp gives the sorbet body and color.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and, once frozen, keeps the sorbet softer by limiting large ice crystals.

The step that matters

Freeze until solid. Sorbet is mostly water and sugar, so it freezes in a way that can leave large, coarse ice crystals if it is not stirred or frozen well. Sugar lowers the freezing point, so the mixture stays softer than plain ice and can be scooped once fully frozen.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Pistachiofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, syrup. 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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