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Dessert

To Make Apricot-Marmalade

A preserve made from apricots, sugar, and water, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sugar 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 ↓

To Make Apricot-Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Pick out all the bad and overripe apricots.

Make the marmalade

  1. Boil the apricots in syrup until they mash easily.

  2. Beat the apricots in a marble mortar to a paste.

  3. Take half the weight of the apricots in loaf sugar.

  4. Add enough water to dissolve the sugar, then boil and skim it well.

  5. Continue boiling until the syrup looks clear and thick like jelly.

  6. Pour the marmalade into sweetmeat glasses 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 + 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 bulk, pectin and flavour that set the marmalade into a paste.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, through concentration, helps the marmalade thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the syrup looks clear and thick like jelly.. Sugar and fruit pectin only set when enough water has evaporated and the sugar concentration is high. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while boiling too long can darken and stiffen it.

“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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