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Dessert

Nut Apricot Parfait

A chilled dessert of apricot pulp, almonds, gelatin, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Nut Apricot Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricot base

  1. Pass the steamed, sweetened apricots through a sieve to make 1 cup of pulp.

  2. Mix the apricot pulp with powdered sugar, lemon juice, and chopped almonds.

  3. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water and stir it into the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. When the mixture begins to thicken, beat it for a few moments.

  2. Gently fold in the whipped heavy cream.

  3. Place the mixture in a cold area to set.

  4. Serve in sherbet glasses or paper cases, and dust with powdered macaroons.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  5. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in, it adds lightness and a creamy, airy texture to the parfait.
Gelatine
Dissolved in cold water, it sets the mixture so the parfait holds its shape when chilled.
Apricot pulp
Provides the main fruit flavour, sweetness, and body of the parfait.
Chopped almonds
Add nutty flavour and a pleasant crunch to the chilled mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the gelatine after dissolving it fully. Gelatine must be completely dissolved in the cold water before it goes into the mixture; undissolved granules leave gritty specks and uneven setting. Beating only once the mixture begins to thicken helps keep the set light and even.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar, almond, cream. 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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