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To Preserve Green Apricots

A method for preserving green apricots using vine leaves, salt, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Preserve Green Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Gather apricots before the stones are hard.

  2. Place them in a pan of cold water with plenty of vine leaves.

  3. Heat over a low fire until they turn yellow.

  4. Remove and rub with a flannel and coarse sea salt to remove lint.

  5. Return them to the same water and leaves, cover tightly, and place far from the fire until they turn light green.

  6. Carefully pick out any bad or broken apricots.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Boil the good apricots gently in a thin syrup two or three times, allowing them to cool each time.

  2. Make a syrup with double refined sugar, not too thick, and give the apricots a gentle boil in it.

  3. Transfer the apricots to pots or glasses, cover with brandy-soaked paper, and store for use.

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

Green apricots
Provide the fruit that is softened and preserved whole.
Double refined sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps keep the preserved apricots from spoiling.

The step that matters

Cooling between syrup boils. Boiling the apricots in syrup two or three times, cooling between each, lets the syrup gradually penetrate the fruit without collapsing it. Boiling continuously would likely break down the skin and flesh.

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.

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