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To Preserve Green Apricots

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and ginger work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 341 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Preserve Green Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Lay vine or apricot leaves at the bottom of a pan.

  2. Layer the green apricots and leaves alternately until the pan is full, with a thick layer of leaves on top.

  3. Fill the pan with spring water and cover tightly to prevent steam from escaping.

  4. Set the pan away from the fire for 4 to 5 hours until the apricots are soft but not cracked.

  5. Make a thin syrup using some of the water and drain the fruit.

  6. Once both the fruit and syrup are cold, combine them in the pan.

  7. Keep the pan at a distance from the fire until the apricots are green, avoiding boiling or cracking.

  8. Carefully transfer the apricots into a pan with the syrup for 2 to 3 days.

  9. Afterward, pour off excess syrup and boil it with more sugar to create a rich syrup, adding sliced ginger.

  10. When cold, pour the thick syrup over the fruit.

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 + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together341 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

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

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