Skip to main content
Dessert

Apricot Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from a custard base with apricots, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Apricot Ice Cream

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apricot Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by mixing corn starch with milk and heating until thickened.

  2. Let the custard cool completely.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cold, add cream, sugar, and cooked apricots.

  2. Press the apricots through a colander to remove skins.

  3. Pour the mixture into a 2-quart ice cream freezer and freeze.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  4. Corn + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a custard that gives the ice cream a smooth body.
Milk
Forms the custard base, adding dairy richness and liquid for freezing.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream rich and creamy rather than icy.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the texture softer.
Cooked apricots
Provide fruit flavor, color, and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Let the custard cool completely. Adding cream and fruit to warm custard can curdle or thin the base and slow freezing. Chilling it fully keeps the mixture smooth and helps it freeze to a creamy texture.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, cream, 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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes