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Sauce

Apricot or Jam Sauce

A sauce made from apricot jam, sugar, water, carmine, rum, and maraschino syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot or Jam Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the apricot jam, castor sugar, and water in a pot.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Stir in a little carmine, white rum, and maraschino or noyau syrup.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Apricot + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rum + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Apricot + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apricot jam
Provides the main fruit flavour and body of the sauce.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the jam to balance its tartness.
White rum
Adds aroma and a warm, spirited flavour to the finished sauce.
Maraschino or noyau syrup
Adds sweetness and a distinct almond-cherry aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the rum and syrup after boiling. Alcohol evaporates quickly when heated, so adding the white rum and syrup after the boil keeps more of their aroma in the finished sauce.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum, syrup. 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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