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Delicious Apricot Jam

A sweet preserve made from apricots, water, powdered sugar, and crushed kernels, finished with powdered sugar topping and brandy-soaked paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Delicious Apricot Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare and halve the apricots, removing and cracking the stones.

  2. Blanch and crush the kernels.

  3. Boil the parings, crushed stones, and skins in double the amount of water needed for the fruit until reduced by half.

Make the jam

  1. Combine 1 pound of apricots with ½ cup of the strained liquid, 1 pound of powdered sugar, and the crushed kernels.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the fruit is mashed and the mixture thickens slightly.

  3. Let the jam cool, then transfer to a pot or pan.

Seal

  1. Sift a little powdered sugar over the top and place a piece of writing paper soaked in brandy on top before sealing.

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 + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the fruit body and flavour that the jam is built around.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set into a thick, spreadable texture.
Apricot kernels
Add a bitter almond-like aroma to the jam.

The step that matters

Cook until the fruit is mashed and the mixture thickens slightly. Sugar and fruit pectin set as the mixture concentrates; stopping too early leaves a runny jam, while overcooking can make it stiff and sticky once cooled.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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