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, Preserved Whole
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Choose large, not too ripe apricots. Open them just enough to remove the stones.
Weigh the apricots and allow 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.
Make the syrup
Put the sugar in a pan and add about ½ cup of water for each pound of sugar.
Boil until it becomes a syrup.
Cook and jar
Add the apricots a few at a time, boiling quickly and turning them when done on one side.
When sufficiently boiled, they will become transparent. Carefully take them out and place them in jars.
Drain the syrup back into the pan, boil and reduce it, then strain it into the jars.
Blanch and peel the kernels, adding a few to each jar.
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.
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- The fruit, which softens and turns transparent as it cooks in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Draws water out of the fruit and forms the syrup that preserves it, adding sweetness.
The step that matters
Boiling the apricots in batches. Boil the apricots quickly and in small batches, turning them once, and remove them as soon as they turn transparent. Too long in the syrup and the fruit breaks down and turns mushy, while too little leaves it undercooked and less well preserved.
“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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