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Stewed Dried Apricots

Stewed dried apricots preserved in sugar syrup, boiled and sealed in jars for several days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Dried Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and soak

  1. Pick over and remove stems and specks from the apricots.

  2. Divide the apricots in half and place ½ pound in each of 2 quart jars.

  3. In a saucepan, boil together the water and sugar.

  4. Pour the boiling liquid over the fruit in the jars.

  5. Screw the lids on tightly and set aside to expand and steam for 1 to 2 days.

Reboil and reseal

  1. Open the jars and pour off the liquid.

  2. Boil the liquid again.

  3. Cover the fruit with the boiled liquid.

  4. Seal the jars as before.

Rest and serve

  1. After 5 to 7 days, the apricots are ready to eat and can be served cold.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Evaporated apricots
Provide the fruit, which softens and plumps as it rehydrates in the hot syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and syrup, and gives the liquid body as it dissolves.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling liquid over the fruit and sealing the jars tightly. Hot syrup softens the dried fruit's cell walls and rehydrates it, while a tight seal traps steam so the fruit plumps evenly. A loose lid lets steam escape and leaves the fruit dry or unevenly softened.

“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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