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Apricots, Cherries, and Plums

A method for preserving apricots, cherries, and plums in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apricots, Cherries, and Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Select well-grown, sound apricots, cherries, or plums that are not fully ripe.

  2. Wash the fruit in boiling water for three minutes.

Pack and seal

  1. Remove the fruit using a skimmer or silver fork and place it in jars or cans without touching it with fingers or metal utensils.

  2. Pack the jars as solidly as possible and fill the gaps with a 20% sugar syrup.

  3. Seal the jars and process them at 212°F (100°C) for 12 minutes per pound of fruit.

  4. Cool the jars quickly after processing.

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 + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Fruit that is the main preserved item, holding its shape and flavor in the jar.
Cherries
Fruit that is the main preserved item, holding its shape and flavor in the jar.
Plums
Fruit that is the main preserved item, holding its shape and flavor in the jar.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that fills the gaps, adding sweetness and helping preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Packing and filling the jars. Packing the fruit solidly and filling gaps with syrup leaves little air in the jar. Less trapped air means less room for spoilage and better fruit appearance after processing.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Plumthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar. 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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