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Apricot Preserve

A preserve made by simmering apricots with sugar.

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. Choose apricots that are not overripe. Stone and peel them, keeping them whole.

  2. Place the apricots hollow side up on a large flat dish.

  3. Sprinkle the apricots with powdered sugar.

  4. Let them sit in a cool place overnight.

Cook and jar

  1. In a preserving pan, combine 1 pound of sugar with 1 pound of apricots and simmer slowly until the fruit looks transparent. Avoid overcrowding the pan with apricots.

  2. Transfer the preserves into glass jars and seal them 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 that softens and turns transparent in the syrup, forming the preserve.
Powdered sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and sweetens it, then thickens into a syrup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the fruit looks transparent. Slow simmering lets sugar penetrate the fruit gradually and set the syrup without scorching or breaking the apricots apart. Too much heat or crowding the pan can cause uneven cooking and a tough, dark result.

“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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