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Apricot Marmalade

A preserve made by boiling apricots with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apricots

  1. Boil the apricots until tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Rinse the boiled apricots through a sieve.

Add sugar and rest

  1. Mix the sieved apricots with ¾ pound of sugar.

  2. For a richer preserve, remove the skins and halve or quarter the apricots.

  3. Sprinkle the apricots with their weight in fine sugar and let sit for several hours.

Simmer

  1. Heat the apricots slowly and gently simmer for about 30 minutes.

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
Supply the fruit, flavour and natural pectin that help the preserve soften and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out its water, helping the preserve thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Heat the apricots slowly and gently simmer. Gentle simmering lets the sugar dissolve and the fruit soften without scorching on the base of the pan. Fast boiling can caramelise the sugar and break down pectin, so the set may be weaker and the flavour darker.

“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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