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Apricots Preserved, Without Fire

Apricots preserved by layering with sugar and sun-drying for four days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and apricot 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 ↓

Apricots Preserved, Without Fire

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and layer

  1. Cut apricots in half and remove the stones.

  2. Layer apricots in a pan and sprinkle with powdered sugar candy.

  3. Repeat layers of apricots and sugar candy.

Dry and store

  1. Let the pan sit in the sun for four days, stirring the fruit three to four times daily.

  2. Transfer the apricots to pots for storage.

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. Sugar + apricottop 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 that softens and concentrates in flavor as its water slowly evaporates in the sun.
White sugar candy
Draws moisture out of the fruit through osmosis, sweetening it and helping preserve it during drying.

The step that matters

Stirring the fruit during the sun-drying days. Sugar draws water out of the apricots and forms a syrup. Stirring three to four times daily spreads the syrup and exposes every piece to air and sun, so the fruit dries evenly instead of staying wet and spoiling in spots.

“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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