Skip to main content
Dessert

To Preserve Apricots in Jelly

A method for preserving apricots in a sugar and codlin‑liquor jelly.

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

Why it works: Apricot and ginger work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 341 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Preserve Apricots in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Pare the apricots very thin and remove the stones.

  2. Weigh an equal amount of fine sugar and sprinkle it over the apricots.

Cook the apricots

  1. Boil the apricots gently until clear.

  2. Transfer the boiled apricots to a bowl and pour the syrup over them.

Make the jelly and pot

  1. Combine the syrup with 1 quart of codlin liquor and 1 pound of fine sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture quickly until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  3. Add the apricots to the jelly.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Skim off any scum.

  6. Transfer to small pots.

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 + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together341 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
Supply the fruit pieces and their flavour, which are held suspended in the set jelly.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps the syrup set into a firm jelly.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture quickly until it reaches a jelly consistency. Fruit, sugar and acid must reach the right concentration to gel. Too little boiling leaves the syrup runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and sugary.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes