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 ↓
To Brt Apricots
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Pare the apricots.
Remove the stones.
Blanch the kernels.
Place the blanched kernels inside the apricots.
Sprinkle the apricots with the sugar and let them sit until the sugar extracts the juice.
Make the syrup
Gently boil the mixture until the fruit is tender.
Carefully remove the fruit.
Boil the syrup until it is very rich.
Pour the syrup over the fruit and let it sit for three days.
Dry in the sun
Place the fruit on dishes.
Dry them in the sun under garden glasses, turning them once or twice a day to maintain their shape.
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 + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,630 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 fruit that softens, sweetens and dries into the finished confection.
- Loaf sugar
- Draws out juice and forms a rich syrup that preserves and sweetens the fruit.
- Blanched apricot kernels
- Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the fruit as it cooks and dries.
The step that matters
Boiling the syrup until very rich. Sugar concentration determines how well the fruit is preserved. Syrup that is not boiled down enough leaves too much water, which can encourage spoilage and a sticky, unstable result. Over-boiling can make the syrup crystallise or harden, so it should be thick but still pourable.
“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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