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 ↓
Green Apricots, Pared Wet
Ingredients
Directions
Pare the skin off the green apricots with a small knife and place them in cold water.
Prepare a preserving pan with boiling water and add the apricots.
Remove the apricots as they rise to the top and transfer them to cold water.
Drain the apricots and place them in a thin boiling syrup.
Add the hardest apricots first and boil for about a dozen times; remove carefully.
For soft apricots, boil only two or three times and cover with syrup.
Let them sit in the syrup until the next day.
Drain the syrup, add more sugar, and boil until it reaches the large thread stage.
Boil the apricots in the syrup two or three times, pouring boiling syrup over the soft ones.
Repeat this process for four or five successive days.
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.
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
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