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To Preserve Apricots

A method for preserving apricots by simmering with sugar and optionally wine spirits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Spirit and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

To Preserve Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh equal amounts of apricots and sugar.

  2. Pare the apricots with a silver knife and remove the stones.

  3. Sprinkle a little pounded sugar over them as you go.

Cook the apricots

  1. Boil the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add the apricots and let them simmer.

  3. Remove from heat, cover with white paper, and let cool nearly.

  4. Repeat simmering and cooling three to four times.

  5. On the last simmer, boil until the apricots are transparent, about 15 minutes.

  6. Remove any scum.

Finish with kernels

  1. Blanch the kernels and add them to the pot.

  2. Alternatively, place blanched kernels in a small jar covered with spirits of wine until ready to use.

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. Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Apricot + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Apricot + spirittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 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 that softens and turns translucent as the syrup penetrates them.
Loaf sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and dissolves into syrup, preserving it and adding sweetness.
Pounded sugar
Coats the cut fruit so sugar begins soaking in before it is placed in the syrup.

The step that matters

Repeating the simmer and cooling. Cooking the apricots in syrup, then letting them cool, repeated several times, lets sugar move into the fruit gradually. A single long boil can shrink or break the fruit and leave it tough or uneven.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, spirit, 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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