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Dessert

Apricot Ice Pudding

A chilled dessert made from cream, egg yolks, apricot jam, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Ice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream, egg yolks, and apricot jam.

  2. Heat over low flame until thickened, stirring constantly.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a bowl.

Finish and freeze

  1. Let it cool, then sweeten to taste with sugar.

  2. Add the juice of ½ lemon and mix well.

  3. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the frozen dessert.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they cook and help give the frozen pudding a smooth texture.
Apricot jam
Provides fruit flavour and sweetness, and its pectin and sugar help shape the texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apricot flavour.

The step that matters

Heat over low flame until thickened, stirring constantly. Egg yolks set when heated, so low heat and constant stirring prevent them from scrambling or curdling before the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, lemon, 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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