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Dessert

Apricot Solid

A gelatin dessert made from apricots, sugar, lemon juice, gelatin, noyeau, served with cream or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 Solid

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apricot base

  1. Cook the apricots with sugar and lemon juice until thick like marmalade.

  2. Sieve the fruit and mix in the melted gelatine dissolved in water.

  3. Add the noyeau and pour into a shallow mould.

Set and serve

  1. Set on ice until firm.

  2. Turn out and serve with cream or custard.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Apricot + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,116 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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
Provide the main fruit flavour and body for the set jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the strained fruit mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly as it chills.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the apricots into a marmalade-like base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apricot flavour and balances the sugar.
Noyeau
Adds a distinct almond-cherry aroma and flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Fully dissolve and mix in the gelatine. Gelatine only sets when fully dissolved and evenly distributed. Undissolved granules leave specks or weak patches, so stir it thoroughly into the strained fruit before pouring and chilling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar, cream. 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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