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Apricot Marmalade

A preserve made from dried apricots, sugar, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and soak the dried apricots for several hours.

  2. Cook the apricots in the soaking water until soft.

  3. Rub the soft fruit through a sieve to make pulp.

Make the marmalade

  1. For each cup of fruit pulp, add 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.

  2. Cook the mixture over very low heat, stirring constantly, until very thick.

Jar and set

  1. Turn the marmalade into sterilized glasses and let it harden.

  2. Cover with paraffin.

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 + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Dried apricots
Provides the fruit base, flavour and body once cooked and pulped.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the mixture thickens, helps give the marmalade its set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour and helps balance the sugar.

The step that matters

Cooking over very low heat with constant stirring. Sugar-rich fruit pulp scorches easily on the bottom of the pan. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep it from burning while water evaporates until the mixture is very thick.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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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