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Apricot Compote

A compote made by boiling apricots with sugar and water until tender, then reducing the 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 ↓

Apricot Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Choose apricots that are not too ripe.

  2. Cut them in half and remove the stones.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a frying pan, boil the water and sugar to create a syrup.

  2. Add the apricots to the boiling syrup and let them boil.

  3. Skim off any foam that forms.

  4. Once the fruit is tender, transfer it to a deep dessert dish.

  5. Reduce the syrup further, then pour it over the apricots.

Serve

  1. Serve the compote cold.

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 body and flavour, softening into tender pieces as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the fruit hold its shape while preserving it.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that cooks and coats the fruit.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam that forms. Foam rising from boiling fruit and sugar carries impurities and can cloud the syrup and spoil the look of the compote if left on the surface.

“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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