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Compote of Peaches and Apricots

A fruit compote made with peaches, apricots, sugar, water, and lemon juice, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Compote of Peaches and Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the peaches and apricots.

Cook and cool

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water; bring to a boil.

  2. Add the fruit and lemon juice to the boiling syrup.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes until the fruit is tender.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool before serving.

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. Peach + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  5. 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

Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and soften into a tender, spoonable texture when simmered.
Apricots
Add fruity sweetness and aroma, and soften into the compote as they simmer.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that the fruit cooks in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit and syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer until the fruit is just tender. Fruit pectin and cell walls break down with extended heat, so simmering too long turns the pieces mushy and dull the flavor. Checking tenderness near the 10-minute mark keeps the slices intact.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, 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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