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Dessert

Syrup

A sweet syrup made from apricots, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Combine chopped apricots and water in a pot.

  2. Boil until it reaches a marmalade consistency.

  3. Strain the juice through a fine sieve.

Make the syrup

  1. Add the juice to the sugar in the pot.

  2. Boil together until it reaches syrup consistency.

  3. Let cool and then bottle.

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 flavor and the juice that becomes the base of the syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as water boils off, concentrates the liquid into a thick syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the juice with the sugar to syrup consistency. Thickness depends on how much water has evaporated and how concentrated the sugar becomes. Stop too early and the syrup stays thin; boil too long and it becomes overly thick and can crystallize or harden as it cools.

“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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