Name: Preserved Apricot Jam
Ingredients: 2 lbs preserved apricots; 5 lbs sugar; 4 quarts water

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 ↓

Preserved Apricot Jam

Ingredients

2 lbs preserved apricots
5 lbs sugar
4 quarts water

Directions

Soak the apricots in water for 24 hours.
Boil the apricots for 4 hours.
Add the sugar and bring to a boil.

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.

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

Preserved apricots: Provide the fruit body and flavour that the jam is built around.
Sugar: Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and set as it cooks.

“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.