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Apricots, Whole

A method for preserving whole apricots in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricots, Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Peel the apricots thinly.

  2. Split them on one side to remove the stones without fully dividing them.

  3. Weigh the apricots.

  4. Add half their weight in sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar and water in a preserving pan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises while boiling until the sugar coats the spoon.

  4. Add the apricots to the pan.

  5. Let them simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

Drain, jar and seal

  1. Remove the apricots with a slotted spoon.

  2. Place them on a hair sieve to drain, catching the syrup in a dish below.

  3. Once drained, place the apricots in jars.

  4. Return the drained syrup to the preserving pan.

  5. Reduce the syrup to the desired quantity to cover the apricots.

  6. The next day, seal the jars as you would for raspberry jam.

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 + 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

Apricots
Provide the fruit that is cooked whole and set in a jar of syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and syrup and helps preserve the apricots.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum and reducing the syrup. Scum left on the surface can cloud the syrup and spoil its look, while syrup reduced to too thin a consistency will not set properly and may let the fruit spoil. Reducing until the sugar coats the spoon concentrates the sugar enough to preserve the apricots.

“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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