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Dessert

Apricots a LA Portugaise

Apricots cooked with clarified sugar and water, then sprinkled with sugar and browned under a pan lid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Apricots a LA Portugaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the apricots in half and remove the stones.

  2. Place them on a silver plate and pour over some clarified sugar mixed with a little water.

Cook and color

  1. Heat them on the stove without covering until sufficiently done.

  2. Remove from heat and sprinkle additional sugar over the apricots.

  3. Cover with the lid of a baking pan and place under the fire to color them.

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 that softens and becomes the dish's main body.
Clarified sugar
Sweetens the apricots and forms a syrup that coats the fruit.
Additional sugar
Adds sweetness on top and helps create a caramelized surface when browned.

The step that matters

Coloring under the fire. Sugar browns quickly once it gets hot enough, so the apricots can scorch or turn bitter if left too long. Watch closely and stop once they reach an even golden color.

“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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