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Apricot Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking apricots with sugar and water until thickened.

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 ↓

Apricot Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Cut the apricots in half and remove the pits.

  2. Blanch the apricots in boiling water for 4 minutes.

Make the preserves

  1. In a large kettle, combine the sugar and water to make a syrup.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil, then add the apricots.

  3. Cook the apricots slowly until they reach 218°F (103°C).

  4. Process the preserves for 25 minutes at 180°F (82°C).

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

Apricots
Provide the fruit body, flavor and pectin that give the preserves their structure and aroma.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and helps set the gel while preserving the fruit.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that the apricots cook in.

The step that matters

Cook the apricots slowly until they reach 218°F (103°C). Sugar concentration and set depend on reaching the target temperature. Cooking too briefly leaves the preserves runny, while overcooking can caramelize sugar and darken the flavor.

“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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