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Apricot Sauce

A sauce made from apricots, lemon, water, and sugar, simmered and sieved.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Apricot Sauce

Why it works: Apricot and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Combine the apricots, water, lemon rind, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer until the mixture can be passed through a fine sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add sugar to taste and reheat the mixture.

  2. Stir in the coloring and essence 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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Their flesh and juice cook down into the sauce's body and main fruit flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon and fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apricot flavor and keeps it from tasting flat.

The step that matters

Simmering until the mixture can be passed through a sieve. Fruit must be fully softened before sieving, or the sauce stays lumpy and grainy. Cooking it gently also helps the pulp break down evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, 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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