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To Preserve Apricots in Jelly

A method for preserving apricots in a sweet jelly using sugar, codlin liquor, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

To Preserve Apricots in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the apricots very thin.

  2. Remove the stones.

  3. Weigh an equal quantity of sugar.

  4. Sprinkle the sugar over the apricots.

Cook the apricots

  1. Boil the apricots very gently until they are clear.

  2. Transfer the apricots to a bowl.

  3. Pour the syrup over them.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine the syrup with a quart of codlin liquor and a pound of sugar.

  2. Boil quickly until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  3. Add the apricots to the jelly.

  4. Boil once and skim well.

Pot

  1. Transfer to small pots.

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 + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 form the body of the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jelly set by binding water.
Codlin liquor
Apple liquid rich in natural pectin, which helps the jelly set.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until it reaches a jelly consistency. Pectin and sugar set into a gel only when enough water has evaporated. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while boiling too long makes it stiff and dull in flavour.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, apple):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotthe original
  4. Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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