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Dessert

Confection of Apricots

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Confection of Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Scald, peel, and crush the apricots to obtain the pulp.

Cook and jar

  1. Stir the sugar into the juice from the crushed fruit.

  2. Heat the mixture to the 'first stage' until it thickens.

  3. Add the fruit pulp and mix thoroughly.

  4. Let it simmer for about 30 minutes until it reaches the 'second stage'.

  5. Remove from heat and immediately place in jars and seal.

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 pulp, flavor, and natural pectin that helps the jam thicken and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it concentrates during cooking, helps it thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Simmer until the second stage. Stopping too early leaves the jam runny and prone to spoiling, while cooking too long over-concentrates the sugar, making it stiff, sticky, and possibly scorched. Pectin and sugar set properly only within a narrow concentration range.

“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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