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Apricot-jam Chutney

A sweet and spicy chutney made with apricot jam, raisins, dried chillies, ginger, garlic, mustard seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Apricot-jam Chutney

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh the ingredients after picking and cleaning.

  2. Stone the raisins and chop them.

  3. Pound the ginger, garlic, and chillies separately into a paste with a little vinegar.

Cook and bottle

  1. Mix all ingredients well and boil for 40 minutes until the mixture thickens slightly.

  2. When cold, transfer to bottles and use as needed.

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. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apricot + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together341 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ginger + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apricot jam
Provides the sweet, fruity base and body of the chutney.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the chutney.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture as they soften during boiling.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savoury depth.
Dried chillies
Provide heat and a pungent, warming flavour.
Ginger
Adds aromatic warmth and a sharp, spicy bite.

The step that matters

Boiling until slightly thickened. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugars and acid, so the chutney thickens and keeps well. Stopping too early leaves it thin and more likely to spoil in the bottle.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, garlic, ginger, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, garlic, ginger, mustard, vinegar. 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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