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Dessert

Fresh Apricot Jam

A jam made from apricots, sugar, and apricot kernels.

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 ↓

Fresh Apricot Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Skin the apricots.

  2. Break the apricots in half.

  3. Remove the stones from the apricots.

  4. Place the apricots hollow side up on a tray.

  5. Sift the sugar over the apricots.

  6. Let the apricots sit for 10 to 12 hours.

  7. Kernel the stones.

Make the jam

  1. Add the kernels to the fruit and sugar in a pan.

  2. Simmer the mixture for about 30 minutes until the jam is clear.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer some fruit to the bottom of each jar.

  2. Add a few kernels to each jar.

  3. Fill the jars with syrup.

  4. Cover the jars with airtight parchment 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

Apricots
Provide the fruit body, natural pectin and most of the jam's flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam, draws out juice and, as it concentrates, helps the jam set and keeps it preserved.
Apricot kernels
Add a subtle bitter almond-like aroma to the jam.

The step that matters

Simmer until the jam is clear. As water evaporates, the sugar and fruit pectin concentrate, which lets the jam set. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while cooking too long dulls the colour and flavour.

“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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