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 ↓
Apricot Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Thinly pare the apricots and remove the stones.
Weigh the fruit and use the same amount of sugar.
Roll the sugar fine and sprinkle it over the apricots on a dish.
Let the apricots and sugar sit for 12 hours.
Cook the jam
Transfer the apricots and sugar to a preserving pan and simmer gently until clear.
Remove the clear apricot pieces as they become clear and skim off any scum.
Jar and seal
Place the apricots in small jars and pour the syrup over them.
Seal the jars like you would for jelly.
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.
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 body and flavor that the jam is built around.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the jam and draws moisture out of the fruit to form a syrup.
The step that matters
Simmer gently until clear. Gentle heat lets the apricot pieces soften and turn clear while the sugar syrup thickens. Boiling hard can break the fruit apart and cloud the jam.
“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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