Why it works: Apricot and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Apricot Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apricots
Remove the stones from the apricots.
Place the apricots in a pot with 4 pints of water and cook until they turn into a marmalade.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve using a spatula.
Flavour and finish
Add enough clarified sugar to sweeten the mixture.
Beat the apricot kernels and infuse them in ⅓ cup of water with the lemon juice.
Strain this infusion through a gauze and mix it well with the apricot mixture.
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.
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Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,098 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,630 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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, body and colour of the ice.
- Clarified sugar
- Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point for a softer ice.
- Apricot kernels
- Add a subtle almond-like aroma when infused in the water.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the apricot flavour.
The step that matters
Cooking the apricots to a marmalade. The apricots must be cooked until fully soft and broken down so the sieved purée is smooth. Under-cooked fruit leaves fibres and lumps that make the ice grainy after freezing.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Peachfits better
- Plumfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, 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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