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Dessert

Apricot Preserve

A preserve made by simmering apricots with sugar until translucent.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select firm, not overripe apricots. Stone and peel them, keeping them whole.

  2. Place the apricots hollow side up on a large flat dish and sprinkle with sugar. Let sit in a cool place overnight.

Cook and jar

  1. In a preserving pan, combine 1 pound of sugar with 1 pound of apricots. Simmer slowly until the fruit looks transparent.

  2. Transfer the apricots to glass jars and seal tightly.

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 fruit body and flavor that the preserve is built around.
White powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and draws water out of the fruit, helping it keep and thicken.

The step that matters

Simmering slowly until transparent. Gentle heat lets sugar replace water inside the fruit so it turns clear while holding its shape. Boiling hard can break the apricots apart and scorch the sugar, giving a ragged, bitter-tasting preserve.

“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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