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Apricots Preserved in Jelly

Apricots preserved in a sugar syrup that turns into jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apricots Preserved in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Pour a little boiling water over the apricots.

  2. Remove the skin and stones by making a slit with a knife and pushing them out gently.

  3. Strew half of the sugar on a dish, place the fruit on it, and cover with the remaining sugar.

  4. Let it sit for 2-3 hours.

Cook and set

  1. Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan and boil gently until the apricots are tender, turning frequently to prevent burning and skimming off any scum.

  2. Place the apricots into jars.

  3. Add apple juice and half a pound of sugar to the syrup, and boil until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  4. Pour the jelly over the fruit in the jars.

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 + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 becomes tender and holds its shape in the jelly.
Powdered loaf sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and sweetens it, forming the syrup.
Apple juice
Adds liquid and natural pectin that help the syrup reach a jelly set.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to a jelly consistency. Sugar and fruit pectin must concentrate to the right point to gel. Too little boiling leaves a runny syrup, while overboiling can make it hard and sugary once cooled.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotthe original
  4. Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. 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.

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