Name: Souffle of Apricot
Ingredients: 2 ounces butter; 2 ounces potato flour; 2 ounces corn flour; 1 pint milk; 4 ounces apricot pulp; 4 egg yolks; 4 egg whites; ½ pint whipped sauce, flavored with apricot

Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Souffle of Apricot

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, warm the butter over low heat.
Stir in the potato flour and corn flour until well combined.
Gradually add the milk, stirring continuously until it boils.
Remove from heat and mix in the apricot pulp and egg yolks.
Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks, then gently fold them into the mixture.
Cook the soufflé as directed in Souffle Espagnole and serve with the apricot-flavored whipped sauce.

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.

Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together938 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, potato, flour, corn, milk, egg, sauce):

Coconutfits better
Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, potato, flour, corn, milk, egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.