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Dessert

Apricot Ice

A frozen dessert made from apricots, oranges, lemons, cream, sugar, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Apricot Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Force the apricots, oranges, and lemons through a sieve.

  2. Boil the sugar and water to make a syrup, then allow it to cool.

Make the ice cream

  1. Mix the fruit puree with the syrup and add the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Once the mixture starts to freeze, add the cream and freeze until almost solid.

  3. Remove the dasher and pack the ice well.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Apricot + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 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

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavor and body of the puree.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer by lowering the freezing point.
Egg whites
Stiffly beaten, they trap air to make the mixture lighter.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth, creamy texture.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Add the cream once the mixture starts to freeze. Adding cream to a liquid base that is still warm or fully liquid can let the fat separate or sink. Adding it once the base has begun to partly freeze helps the fat disperse evenly and keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, cream, lemon, 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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