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Apricots in Brandy

Apricots are pickled in brandy with sugar and sealed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apricots in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick and wipe the apricots, then weigh them.

  2. Place the apricots in a tightly fitting ice pot.

  3. Add ¼ of the weight of the fruit in finely powdered white sugar.

  4. Cover the fruit with brown brandy.

  5. Place a doubled piece of foolscap paper over the fruit and close the lid.

Warm and bottle

  1. Put the ice pot in a saucepan of hot water, heating until the brandy is warm but not boiling.

  2. Remove the fruit when the brandy is warm enough to touch.

  3. Transfer the fruit to a jar.

  4. Pour the warm brandy over the apricots.

  5. Wait until the apricots and brandy are completely cool.

  6. Tightly seal the jars with bladder skin.

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 + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the fruit flavour and the soft, tender texture of the finished preserve.
Finely powdered white sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws moisture out, helping preserve it in the syrup.
Brown brandy
Acts as the alcohol preserving the fruit and adds aroma and warm flavour.

The step that matters

Warming the brandy without boiling. Brandy boiling drives off alcohol and aroma, weakening the preservative effect and flavour. Gentle heat warms the fruit enough to take up the spirit without damaging it.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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