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A Beautiful Preserve of Apricots

A preserve made by simmering apricots with sugar and kernels, then cooling in brandy paper.

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 ↓

A Beautiful Preserve of Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Choose the finest ripe apricots and pare them as thin as possible.

  2. Cut the apricots in half and lay them hollow side up on dishes.

  3. Strew an equal weight of finely pounded sugar over the apricots.

  4. Break the stones and blanch the kernels.

  5. Let the fruit sit with the sugar for twelve hours.

Cook the preserve

  1. Put the apricots, sugar, juice, and kernels into a preserving pan.

  2. Simmer gently until the apricots become clear.

  3. Remove the apricot pieces as they clear.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises.

Pot and seal

  1. Place them in small pots.

  2. Pour the syrup and kernels over the apricots.

  3. Cover with brandy paper.

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

Ripe apricots
Provide the fruit that softens and turns clear as it cooks in syrup.
Loaf sugar
Draws moisture from the fruit and forms the syrup that preserves it and sets its sweetness.
Apricot kernels
Add a distinctive almond-like aroma to the syrup as they cook.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the apricots become clear. Boiling hard breaks down the fruit and can make the pieces ragged and cloudy. A gentle simmer lets the sugar penetrate slowly so the apricots keep their shape and turn translucent.

“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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