Why it works: Apricot and corn work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Apricot Foam
Ingredients
Directions
Make the apricot base
Heat the chopped apricots in a saucepan.
Dissolve the corn starch in a little water and add it to the apricots to thicken.
Pass the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.
Finish and serve
Once cool, gently fold in the well-beaten egg whites.
Serve the apricot foam ice cold.
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 + corntop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together58 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,484 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Apricot + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Stewed apricots
- Provide the main fruit flavour and the bulk of the foam's body.
- Corn starch
- Thickens the apricot mixture so it can hold its shape once combined with the whites.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into a foam that gives the dish its light, airy texture.
The step that matters
Folding in the egg whites. Fold gently and only once the mixture is cool. Deflating the whipped whites by stirring hard or adding them to warm mixture causes the foam to collapse and lose its volume.
Swap the apricot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, egg):
- Coconutfits better
- Avocadofits better
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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.
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