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Preserve

To Preserve Apricots

A method for preserving whole ripe apricots in sugar syrup with their blanched kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Preserve Apricots

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select the finest ripe apricots and pare them thinly.

  2. Weigh the apricots and use an equal weight of finely powdered sugar, strew it over the fruit.

  3. Break the stones and blanch the kernels.

  4. Let the apricots sit for twelve hours with the sugar.

Cook and preserve

  1. Put the apricots, sugar, juice, and kernels into a preserving pan.

  2. Simmer gently until the apricots are clear.

  3. Remove the fruit individually as they become clear and place them into small pots.

  4. Pour the syrup and kernels over the fruit and cover with brandy paper.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 main fruit, whose flesh softens and turns clear as it cooks in sugar.
Finely powdered sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and forms a syrup that preserves it and sweetens it.
Apricot kernels
Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the apricots are clear. Simmering gently keeps the fruit whole while sugar slowly replaces its water. Boiling hard can break the fruit apart and make the syrup cloudy.

“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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