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To Preserve Green Apricots

A method for preserving green apricots using vine leaves, salt, sugar syrup, 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 the apricots in a pan of hard water with plenty of vine leaves.

  3. Set the pan over a slow fire until the apricots turn yellow.

  4. Remove the apricots and rub them with a flannel and salt to remove lint.

  5. Return the apricots to the pan with the same water and leaves, cover tightly, and keep at a distance from the fire until they turn light green.

  6. Pick out any bad or broken apricots.

Syrup and storage

  1. Gently boil the best apricots two or three times in a thin syrup, allowing them to cool completely each time.

  2. Make a syrup with double refined sugar, but not too thick.

  3. Gently boil the apricots in the syrup, then place them in pots or glasses.

  4. Dip paper in brandy, lay it over the apricots, 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
Firm, tart fruit that must hold its shape through gentle repeated heating.
Vine leaves
Their tannins help keep the fruit firm and the green colour intact.
Double refined sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in a thick enough syrup, helps preserve it.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol that help discourage spoilage on the surface.

The step that matters

Gently boil the best apricots two or three times in a thin syrup, allowing them to cool completely each time.. Gentle heat keeps the skins from splitting, while cooling between boils lets syrup slowly soak into the fruit. Rapid boiling would break the apricots apart and leave them soft.

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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