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Dessert

Apricot Butter

A sweet spread made from apricots, sugar, water, and optional whisky or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and whisky work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare apricots by removing pits and chopping them finely.

  2. Add 10-20% more sugar to the chopped apricots.

Cook

  1. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring frequently until it thickens.

  2. If using whisky or brandy, add it as the mixture cooks to preserve it.

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 + whiskytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + whiskytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the fruit flavor, natural pectin, and the bulk of the butter's body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture while preserving it.

The step that matters

Stirring frequently over low heat. Apricot sugars can scorch on the bottom of the pan at low heat, so frequent stirring prevents burnt flavor and sticking as the mixture thickens.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, whisky. 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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