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To Dry Apricots in Half

This recipe dries apricots by halving them and coating with powdered 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 ↓

To Dry Apricots in Half

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Thinly pare and halve the apricots, then weigh them.

  2. Place the apricots in a dish and sprinkle the powdered sugar over them.

  3. Allow the sugar to melt, then set the dish over a gentle heat.

  4. As each piece of apricot becomes tender, remove it from the dish.

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 and becomes tender as it cooks in the syrup.
Powdered sugar
Melts into a syrup that penetrates the fruit, adding sweetness and preserving it.

The step that matters

Removing each piece as it becomes tender. Apricots cook quickly in sugar syrup, and overcooking makes them break down and lose their shape. Removing each piece as soon as it softens keeps the fruit intact.

“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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