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 ↓
To Dry Apricots
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Pare the apricots and remove the stones.
Blanch the kernels and place them inside the apricots.
Make the syrup
Sprinkle 1 pound of sugar over the fruit and let it sit until the sugar extracts the juice.
Gently boil the mixture until the fruit is tender.
Carefully remove the fruit and boil the syrup until it is very rich.
Pour the syrup over the fruit and let it sit for three days.
Dry
Place the fruit on dishes and dry them in the sun under garden glasses, turning them once or twice a day.
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 + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Apricots
- Provide the fruit that is softened, sweetened and dried into the final product.
- Powdered loaf sugar
- Draws juice out of the fruit and forms a rich syrup that sweetens and preserves it.
- Blanched apricot kernels
- Add a nutty, almond-like aroma inside each apricot.
The step that matters
Boiling the syrup until very rich. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the syrup thickens and preserves the fruit; if it is under-boiled, the fruit may stay wet and spoil during drying.
“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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