Name: Stewed Apricots
Ingredients: Apricots; Sugar (about 2 tablespoons per pint of apricots); Fresh water

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 ↓

Stewed Apricots

Ingredients

Apricots
Sugar (about 2 tablespoons per pint of apricots)
Fresh water

Directions

Wash the apricots carefully and soak them in fresh water until tender.
Cook the apricots in the same soaking water over low heat for a long time.
Taste the apricots and add sugar as needed, about 2 tablespoons per pint.
Continue cooking until the sugar dissolves and the apricots are completely tender.

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.

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 main fruit body, flavor, and the soft texture of the finished stew.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the natural tartness of 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.