Skip to main content
Dessert

Compote of Green Apricots

A sweet compote made from green apricots simmered in sugar, water, jam, lemon, and kirsch, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apricot and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Compote of Green Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dust the halved apricots with finely sifted sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, apricot jam, lemon peel, and lemon juice; bring to a boil.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes, then skim and strain the syrup.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the apricots to the syrup and stew gently for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Let the apricots cool, then stir in the kirsch.

  3. Serve in a glass dish with whipped cream.

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 + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. 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

Young apricots
Provide the fruit that softens into tender pieces during gentle stewing.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the fruit hold its shape while stewing.
Apricot jam
Adds concentrated apricot flavour and body to the syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and aroma of the syrup.

The step that matters

Stew gently after the syrup is ready. A gentle simmer keeps the apricots tender and whole; a hard boil can break them apart and make the syrup cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar, sherry, cream. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes