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Apricots , Dried and Salted

A method of preserving apricots by salting, drying, and sugaring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 , Dried and Salted

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and dry

  1. Soak the apricots in salt water (2 ounces of salt to 1 quart of water) for a few hours.

  2. Lay the apricots on a mat to dry in the sun.

  3. The next day, press them between your hands to flatten and remove the stones.

  4. Repeat the drying process the following day.

Crystallize

  1. To crystallize, soak the apricots in lime water for 5 minutes until tender.

  2. Remove the apricots from the lime water.

  3. Dry them with a soft cloth.

  4. Rub sugar into each apricot, using 1.5 pounds of sugar for every pound of apricots.

  5. Pack the apricots tightly in jars with plenty of sugar in between.

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 flesh, which softens and turns chewy as it dries and absorbs sugar.
Crystallized white sugar
Draws out moisture and coats the fruit, sweetening it and helping preserve it.

The step that matters

Packing the apricots in sugar. Sugar draws water out of the fruit and keeps microbes from growing. If the apricots are not fully coated, or sugar is left out between layers, the fruit can spoil or ferment.

“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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