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Apricots, Dried and Salted

Apricots that are dried, salted, soaked, sugar-coated, and jarred.

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 ↓

Apricots, Dried and Salted

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the apricots in salt water (2 ounces of salt to 1 quart of water) for a few hours.

  2. Lay the apricots on a mat to dry in the sun.

  3. The next day, press the apricots between your hands to flatten them and remove the stones.

  4. Repeat the drying process the following day.

  5. If the weather is damp, dry the apricots in a heated room or a cool oven.

Soak and sugar

  1. Soak the dried apricots in lime water for 5 minutes until tender.

  2. Remove the apricots, wipe them dry with a soft cloth, and rub crystallized sugar into each apricot.

  3. Use 1.5 pounds of sugar for every pound of apricots.

Pack

  1. Pack the apricots tightly in jars with plenty of sugar in between.

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

Soft ripe apricots
The fruit that is dried, flattened and softened to become chewy and tender.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the fruit, helping to preserve it and firm its texture before drying.
Sugar
Draws out remaining moisture and adds sweetness, helping preserve the dried apricots.

The step that matters

Dry the apricots fully before sugaring. Salt and sugar preserve fruit largely by drawing out water. If the apricots still hold moisture when packed, the sugar cannot preserve them well and they may spoil, so each drying day matters, especially in damp weather.

“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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