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Apricot and Pineapple Conserve

A preserve made from apricots and pineapples sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apricot and Pineapple Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, remove eyes, and core the pineapples.

  2. Cut the pineapples into small pieces.

  3. Add the pineapple to 2 cups of water, cover, and cook gently until tender.

  4. In a shallow dish, cover the apricots with boiling water and let stand for 4 minutes.

  5. Drain the apricots.

  6. Cover the apricots with cold water.

  7. Remove the skins.

  8. Cut the apricots in half.

  9. Remove the pits.

  10. Add the apricots to the cooked pineapple.

  11. Measure the mixture.

  12. Transfer the mixture to a preserving kettle.

Cook the preserve

  1. For every 4 cups of fruit and juice, add 3 cups of warm sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture very slowly until it thickens and becomes clear, achieving a delicate amber color.

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. Pineapple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 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

Pineapples
Provide the main fruit body and tartness, and their juice helps build the preserve's liquid base.
Apricots
Add fruit flavor and body that softens and blends into the preserve as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boiling very slowly after adding the sugar. Sugar concentrates as the mixture cooks, and a slow boil lets water evaporate and the fruit's pectin and sugar thicken it gradually. Boiling too hard risks scorching the sugar and darkening the color too far.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar. 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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