Skip to main content
Dessert

Rum Syrup

A sweet syrup made with sugar, water, rum, apricot jam, and a glaze of jam and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rum and apricot work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 149 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Rum Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and ½ pint of water together until thick.

  2. Add the rum and stir until combined.

Make the glaze

  1. For the glaze, mix the apricot jam and ⅓ pint of water in a pan.

  2. Stir over heat until thick, then strain and use immediately.

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. Rum + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + apricottop 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

Lump sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a thick, sweet syrup body.
Rum
Adds the main flavour and aroma to the syrup.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour, and its pectin helps thicken the glaze.

The step that matters

Stir the glaze over heat until thick, then use it immediately. Jam-based glazes thicken further as they cool, so they set quickly and become hard to spread. Using the glaze while it is still warm keeps it smooth and spreadable.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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

“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.

You might also like

Apricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipesMixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes