Name: Apricot Drink
Ingredients: 12 apricots; 1 quart boiling water; ¼ pound sugar

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 Drink

Ingredients

12 apricots
1 quart boiling water
¼ pound sugar

Directions

Peel the apricots and remove the stones.
Pour boiling water over the apricots and let them stand for 1 hour.
Strain the liquid and sweeten it with sugar.

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.

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 fruity flavour and aroma that the tea takes on as it steeps.
Boiling water: Extracts flavour and colour from the apricots during the hour of standing.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the tart fruit flavour.

“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.