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Dessert

Apricot Cream

A custard dessert made with apricots, sugar, milk, egg yolks, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and milk work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 826 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apricot Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Drain the juice from the apricots and add an equal amount of water.

  2. Boil the water with the sugar to make a syrup.

  3. Add the apricots to the syrup and simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Drain the syrup.

  5. Set aside the syrup and the apricots separately.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the boiled flour with the cold milk, then stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

  3. Stir over heat for 10 minutes without boiling.

  4. Pour the custard into a basin.

  5. Whisk occasionally until nearly cold.

Set and assemble

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in the boiling milk.

  2. Mix the gelatin into the custard thoroughly.

  3. Rinse a quart mold with cold water.

  4. Layer the cream and apricots in the mold, waiting a minute between layers.

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. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard and add richness to the cream.
Gelatine
Sets the cream so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Boiled flour
Thickens the milk so the custard becomes smooth and body-rich.
Preserved apricots
Provide the fruit flavour and sweetness layered through the cream.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they warm but curdle if they boil, leaving a grainy custard instead of a smooth cream.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, 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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