Why it works: Apricot and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
A Mixed Jam for Tarts or Tartlets
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove the kernels from the apricots and blanch them.
Make the jam
Combine the blanched apricots, green gage plums, and lump sugar in a pot.
Gently boil the mixture until it becomes a clear jelly.
Pour the jam into small pots.
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.
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Apricot + plumtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together284 recipes
Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,630 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,313 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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 flavor and body for the jam.
- Green gage plums
- Add tartness and pectin-rich body to the jam.
- Lump sugar
- Sweetens the jam and helps it set into a jelly.
The step that matters
Gently boil the mixture until it becomes a clear jelly. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugar and fruit or break down the pectin, while too little cooking leaves the jam runny. Gentle, steady boiling lets sugar and fruit pectin concentrate until the jam sets.
Swap the plum
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Peachfits better
- Plumthe original
- Figfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar. 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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