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To Preserve Apricots in Jelly

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

To Preserve Apricots in Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

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

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

  3. Boil the apricots gently until clear.

  4. Transfer the apricots to a bowl and pour the liquid over them.

Make the jelly

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

  2. Boil quickly until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  3. Add the fruit to the jelly.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Skim off any foam.

  6. Transfer the mixture into 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 + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 flavour and the body of the preserve once cooked down.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it set into a jelly by concentrating the mixture.
Codlin-liquor
Supplies natural pectin and liquid so the preserve can gel.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until it reaches a jelly consistency. Sugar and pectin only set when enough water has evaporated and the mixture reaches the gelling point. Under-boiling leaves a runny preserve, while over-boiling can make it dull and tough.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotthe original
  4. Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. 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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