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 Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Rub the apricots with a dry cloth to remove dust and separate the pits.
Place the fruit in a porcelain kettle and cook slowly on the back of the stove until juicy, which may take all day and night.
Extract the juice
Strain the mixture through a cheesecloth bag or wire sieve, pressing gently with a spoon to extract all the juice.
Make the jelly
For each cup of juice, add one cup of sugar.
Put the juice in a kettle, bring to a boil, then add the heated sugar and boil for twenty minutes.
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 pectin and acid that let the juice set into a jelly.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it thicken and set as it boils.
The step that matters
Boil the juice with the heated sugar for twenty minutes. Sugar and acid must be boiled at a high enough concentration for pectin to form a gel when cooled; too short a boil leaves the jelly runny.
“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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