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Dessert

Apricot Preserve

A sweet preserve made from ripe apricots, powdered sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Apricot Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the apricots, cut them in half, and remove the stones.

  2. In a large earthen pan, layer the fruit and sugar alternately until all is used, finishing with a thick layer of sugar on top.

  3. Let it stand for 24 hours.

Prepare the kernels

  1. Break the stones.

  2. Soak the kernels in hot water.

  3. Cool the kernels in cold water.

  4. Skin the kernels.

  5. Slice the kernels thinly.

Cook and pot

  1. Put the apricots in a preserving pan and boil for 1 hour, stirring constantly.

  2. Towards the end, add the sliced kernels and stir well.

  3. Check if the preserve hangs in a thread from the spoon; if so, it is done.

  4. Pour into jam pots and let it stand uncovered for 24 hours.

  5. Cover the preserve with white paper dipped in brandy.

  6. Tie a second paper over the top.

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, pectin and tart flavour that form the body of the preserve.
Powdered sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and acts as a preservative, helping the preserve keep and set.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and, placed on the paper, helps protect the surface of the preserve.

The step that matters

Checking the set with the thread test. Boiling too briefly leaves the preserve runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking makes it stiff and sugary. Sugar and pectin set at a specific concentration, so the spoon test shows when the preserve has reached 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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