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Dessert

Abricots— Apricots. Suedoise d’Abricots.

A dessert of apricot halves poached in curaçao syrup and arranged on fried bread croutons with marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and angelica share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 80 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Abricots— Apricots. Suedoise d’Abricots.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Halve the apricots, remove the stones, and blanch the kernels.

  2. Make a syrup with the sugar and water, then add the apricots while the syrup boils.

  3. Add the curaçao and simmer for a few minutes, then drain the fruit using a fine sieve.

Make the croutons

  1. Cut a piece of bread about 3 inches long and 24 round slices resembling apricot halves.

  2. Fry the bread pieces in hot butter, drain, and sprinkle with ground cinnamon and castor sugar.

Assemble and serve

  1. Attach the large crouton to the center of a round dish with a little marmalade.

  2. Place each half-apricot on a small crouton and arrange them in rows around the center piece.

  3. Stand the dish in the oven to heat, boil the syrup, and pour it over the apricots.

  4. Top each apricot with half a kernel and decorate with strips of angelica before serving.

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. Cinnamon + angelicatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Apricot + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Apricot + angelicatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apricots
Form the main fruit element, softened and flavoured by gentle simmering in the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and gives it body so it coats the fruit.
Curaçao
Adds orange aroma and a touch of flavour to the simmered syrup.
Bread
Forms the fried croutons that support the apricot halves and soak up the syrup.
Butter
Fries the bread, adding richness and golden browning to the croutons.
Marmalade
Acts as a sticky adhesive that holds the large crouton to the dish.

The step that matters

Drain the fruit before assembly. Fruit left too wet will make the croutons soggy and thin the syrup. Draining through a fine sieve removes excess liquid so the pale syrup poured later sets the dessert cleanly.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar, bread, butter, cinnamon. 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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