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Dessert

Whole Apricots in Syrup

Preserved whole apricots soaked in alum, then packed in jars with syrup to prevent fermentation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and syrup work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 451 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Whole Apricots in Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Prick the apricots with a copper needle.

  2. Soak the apricots in cold water with alum for 2 hours.

  3. Drain the apricots and place them in cans or jars.

Make the syrup

  1. Prepare syrup and color it with orange color if apricots are too green.

  2. Add sulphite of soda to the syrup to prevent fermentation.

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 + 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

Apricots
The main fruit; its flesh softens and turns tender as it is preserved in syrup.
Alum
Firms the fruit's tissue so the apricots hold their shape through soaking and canning.
Sulphite of soda
Inhibits fermentation in the syrup, helping the preserved fruit keep.

The step that matters

Soaking the apricots in alum water. Alum firms the fruit by acting on its cell walls and pectin. Soaking in the stated proportion for the stated time keeps the apricots firm rather than soft or mushy after canning.

“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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