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To Preserve Apricots

A method of preserving apricots in clarified sugar syrup.

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 ↓

To Preserve Apricots

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select apricots that are not quite ripe and remove the stones.

  2. Place the apricots in a pot over low heat and scald them until soft.

  3. Using a skimmer, remove the apricots from the water and place them in cold water.

  4. Drain the apricots and lay them singly in a preserving pan.

Make the syrup and soak

  1. Boil clarified sugar until it reaches a blowing stage.

  2. Pour enough boiled sugar to cover the apricots.

  3. Return the pan to the heat and let it boil gently for 2 to 3 minutes.

  4. Allow the apricots to stand for four days.

Finish and jar

  1. After four days, drain the syrup and boil it until it reaches a strong blowing stage.

  2. Add more clarified sugar as needed to cover the apricots.

  3. Once cooled, transfer the apricots to jars.

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
Provide the fruit that softens during scalding and becomes the preserve itself.
Clarified sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, draws water out to help preserve it.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to a strong blowing stage. Sugar concentration controls how well the fruit keeps. A syrup that is too dilute draws out less water and offers weaker preservation, so the syrup must be boiled to the stated stage before it covers the apricots.

“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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