Skip to main content
Dessert

Apricot Ice

A frozen dessert made from stewed apricots, water, sugar, and egg whites, served with sliced apricots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Stew the apricots with the blanched kernels in water and sugar until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve and place it in a freezer.

Freeze and finish

  1. When partly frozen, beat in the well-frothed egg whites.

  2. Finish freezing and just before serving, stir in the sliced apricots.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Apricot + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,712 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main flavour and the body of the ice cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer rather than icy.
Egg whites
Whipped air makes the ice cream lighter and smoother.

The step that matters

Beating in the egg whites. Beat in the frothed whites only once the base is partly frozen. Thickened but not solid, it holds their air, so the foam does not collapse and the texture stays light.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

You might also like