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Apricot Jumbles

Apricot Jumbles are dried apricot paste rolled into knots, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Apricot Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Pour boiling water over the apricots.

  2. Let the apricots sit until soft.

  3. Remove the stones from the apricots.

  4. Dry the fruit in a pan over the fire or in an oven.

Shape the jumbles

  1. Beat the dried apricots into a stiff paste with an equal weight of sugar.

  2. If desired, add a little cochineal to color the fruit pulp red.

  3. Roll the paste into lengths.

  4. Tie the lengths into knots.

  5. Preserve the jumbles in a dry place.

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 main fruit pulp, flavor and body for the paste once softened and dried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, mixed in equal weight, helps bind the dried fruit into a stiff paste.

The step that matters

Drying the apricot pulp. Drying must remove enough moisture for the paste to hold its shape when rolled and knotted. Too much moisture leaves the jumbles sticky and prone to spoiling in storage.

“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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