Name: Apricots Ripe, Wet
Ingredients: ripe apricots; water; thin syrup; apple jelly

Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apricots Ripe, Wet

Ingredients

ripe apricots
water
thin syrup
apple jelly

Directions

Split the apricots in half and peel them carefully.
Boil water in a preserving pan and add some apricots until they soften.
Prepare two bowls of cold water; place the soft apricots in one bowl and the harder ones in another.
In a separate preserving pan, boil thin syrup and add the harder apricots; boil for 10 minutes.
Transfer the boiled harder apricots to a flat earthen pan and cover with paper.
In the syrup pan, add the soft apricots and boil briefly before adding them to the same pan as the harder ones.
The next day, boil the harder apricots for 5 minutes and return them to the pan, draining the syrup from the soft ones.
Boil the drained syrup and pour it over the apricots while hot.
Repeat this process for four or five days, keeping the apricots covered with syrup.
Finally, transfer the apricots to pots and pour a little apple jelly on top, ensuring the pots are dry to prevent spoilage.

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.

Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together777 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
Apricot + syruptop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Syrup + appletop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together742 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).