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Dessert

Apricot Cheese

A chilled dessert made from apricot marmalade, heavy cream, egg, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Apricot Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Whisk the cream with the egg until frothy.

  2. Dissolve the isinglass in a small amount of water and let it cool.

Make and set

  1. Combine the apricot marmalade, whipped cream, and cooled isinglass; mix well.

  2. Oil a mold and pour in the mixture.

  3. Refrigerate until it sets.

  4. Freeze until firm.

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. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  3. Apricot + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,712 recipes

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

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Apricot marmalade
Provides the main fruit flavor and sweetness.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, and whips to give a light, airy texture.
Egg
Helps the cream froth and adds richness and structure to the set dessert.
Isinglass
A gelatin-like setting agent that firms the mixture as it chills.

The step that matters

Dissolving and cooling the isinglass before combining. Isinglass must be fully dissolved and only cooled, not hot, before mixing. Added hot, it can thin the cream and deflate the whipped mixture, and it sets less evenly as it chills.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg. 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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