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Apricot Bon Bons

A candied apricot confection made by cooking apricots with sugar and glucose, then coating with fondant or chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apricot Bon Bons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Run the apricots through a fine sieve.

  2. Add granulated sugar and glucose.

  3. Cook until it reaches a jelly consistency (test in cold water).

  4. Stir in a few drops of almond extract and dust with starch.

Set and finish

  1. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  2. Dip the pieces in fondant or chocolate, or crystallize them.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Apricot + sugartop 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 flavour and the pectin-rich pulp that lets the mixture set into a jelly.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens and, when cooked down, helps the mixture thicken and set firmly.
Glucose
Inhibits sugar crystallisation, keeping the jelly smooth and soft rather than grainy.

The step that matters

Cooking to jelly consistency. Cooking must reach the point where the sugar concentration and pectin allow the mixture to set. Undercooked jelly stays runny, while overcooked jelly becomes stiff and hard once cool. Testing a drop in cold water shows when it is ready.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, chocolate. 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.

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