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Apricots, Preserved Whole

Whole apricots are preserved by boiling them in a sugar syrup until translucent and then jarred.

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 ↓

Apricots, Preserved Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Open the apricots just enough to remove the stones.

  2. Weigh the apricots.

Make the syrup

  1. Put the sugar in a pan.

  2. Add water to the sugar.

  3. Boil until it becomes a syrup.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the apricots a few at a time.

  2. Boil quickly and turn them when done on one side.

  3. When sufficiently boiled, they will become transparent.

  4. Carefully take them out and put them in jars.

  5. Drain the syrup into the pan.

  6. Boil and reduce the syrup, then strain it into the jars.

  7. Blanch and peel the kernels, adding a few to each jar.

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, which turns transparent and tender as it cooks in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, once boiled into syrup, preserves it by drawing out water.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can form a syrup that the fruit cooks in.

The step that matters

Boil the apricots quickly and turn them. Fruit boiled too long in syrup can break apart and turn mushy, while turning them ensures even cooking and syrup penetration on both sides.

“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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