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Dessert

Gateau of Apricots

A gelatin dessert made with apricots, sugar, lemon juice, and water, set in a mold and decorated with dried cherries and angelica.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and angelica match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 189 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Gateau of Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricot mixture

  1. Rub the apricots through a sieve.

  2. Mix in the lemon juice and sugar.

  3. Dissolve the gelatine in ½ cup of water and strain it into the apricot mixture.

Set and unmold

  1. Decorate a mold with dried cherries and angelica.

  2. Pour the apricot mixture into the mold and let it stand until cold and set.

  3. To unmold, dip the mold in warm water, shake it, and carefully turn it onto a glass dish.

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. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + angelicatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable gel as it cools.
Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and the body of the purée.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apricot flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before straining. Gelatine only sets when it is completely dissolved and evenly distributed. Undissolved granules or lumps leave weak spots and grainy texture in the finished gel, so the mixture should be smooth before it is poured into the mold.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, angelica. 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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