Skip to main content
Dessert

Apricots in Brandy

Preserved apricots soaked in brandy and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apricot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apricots in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Scald apricots and set aside in a pan with their syrup until the next day.

  2. Boil the syrup down to a sugar consistency.

  3. Add an equal proportion of brandy to the syrup and let it cool nearly to room temperature.

Jar and store

  1. Carefully place apricots in jars and pour the cooled syrup over them.

  2. Seal the jars tightly and store in a cool place.

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 + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and soft, tender texture once cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Makes the syrup thick and sweet, and helps preserve the fruit.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warm flavour, and its alcohol helps keep the fruit stable.

The step that matters

Add the brandy only after the syrup has cooled. Alcohol evaporates readily when hot, so adding brandy to boiling syrup would lose much of its aroma and flavour. Cooling the syrup nearly to room temperature keeps the brandy's character in the finished fruit.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesApricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipesBrandy PuddingBrandy Pudding13 recipes