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Apricots Preserved Without Fire

A method of preserving apricots by layering them with sugar and drying in the sun.

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

  1. Cut the apricots in halves and remove the stones.

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

  3. Alternate layers of apricots and sugar candy.

Sun-dry

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

  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

Very ripe apricots
Provide the fruit that dries into a chewy, concentrated texture.
White sugar-candy
Draws moisture out of the fruit and preserves it through the sun-drying.

The step that matters

Stirring the fruit during the four days in the sun. Stirring exposes fresh surfaces and redistributes the syrup that forms as sugar draws out moisture, so the fruit dries evenly and does not spoil in damp 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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