Name: Apricots From California
Ingredients: 1 pint apricots; 1 quart cold water; 1 pint white granulated 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 ↓

Apricots From California

Ingredients

1 pint apricots
1 quart cold water
1 pint white granulated sugar

Directions

Prepare

Wash the apricots in cold water.
Place them in a stew pan and cover with cold water.
When the water is scalding hot, pour it off.

Cook

Add 1 quart of cold water and bring to a boil.
Cook the apricots for 15 minutes.
Stir in the sugar and let them simmer for another 15 minutes.

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 main fruit flavour and body of the dish.
White granulated sugar: Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit's flavour during simmering.

“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.