Why it works: Apricot and white wine work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓
Apricot Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Remove the stones from the apricots, take out the kernels, and cut each apricot into 6 or 8 pieces.
Put the apricots into a preserving pan with the water, sugar, and about half the kernels, and simmer gently for 1 hour.
Ferment
Transfer the mixture to an earthenware vessel and let it cool undisturbed.
Stir in the yeast; if using compressed yeast, mix it smoothly with a little warm water first.
Cover the vessel with a cloth and let it sit undisturbed for 3 days.
Strain the liquid into a clean, dry cask, add the white wine, and bung lightly.
Age and bottle
After 6 months, draw off the wine into bottles, cork them tightly, and store in a cool, dry place for about 12 months before use.
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.
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Apricot + white winetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together106 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,630 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,586 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Apricots
- Provide the fruit sugars and flavour that the wine is built on.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast, which turns the sugar into alcohol during fermentation.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
- White wine
- Adds extra body and acidity to the finished wine.
The step that matters
Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the simmered mixture must cool to a warm, not hot, temperature before the yeast goes in. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it starts.
Swap the apricot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, white wine):
- Vanillafits better
- Applefits better
- Plumfits about as well
- Apricotthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine. 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.
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