Skip to main content
Dessert

Green Apricots

A preserved fruit made by boiling apricots with wood ashes, then sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and apricot 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 ↓

Green Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Boil 4 pints of water and add ½ pound of wood ashes.

  2. Stir in the apricots until the down comes off easily.

  3. Remove apricots and rinse in fresh water.

  4. Prick apricots with a pin and boil in 5-6 pints of water for 2 hours until tender.

  5. Remove from heat and rinse again in fresh water.

Candy in syrup

  1. Clarify 1½ pounds of sugar in 1 pint of water.

  2. Add apricots to the sugar and heat for about 1 hour without boiling.

  3. Let apricots sit in the sugar overnight.

  4. Drain apricots, boil the sugar, and pour it over the fruit before serving.

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. Sugar + apricottop 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

Wood ashes
Alkaline solution that loosens the fuzzy down from the apricot skins.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and preserves it as it soaks.
Apricots
The main fruit, which softens and becomes sweet as it absorbs the syrup.

The step that matters

Heating the apricots in sugar without boiling. Boiling the fruit in syrup can break it apart and toughen the skin. Gentle heat lets the sugar penetrate slowly so the apricots stay whole and tender.

“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.

More green apricots recipes

Preserved 6 See all 3 →

You might also like

Apricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipesMixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes