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Apricot Marmalade

A preserve made from apricots and sugar cooked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Apricot Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose ripe, deep yellow apricots.

  2. Peel, pit, and chop them.

  3. Weigh 12 pounds of chopped apricots and place them in a preserving pan with 9 pounds of sugar.

Cook and jar

  1. Cook over high heat, stirring constantly with a long wooden spoon.

  2. Drop a few drops into a glass of cold water to test if the marmalade is done.

  3. If the drops do not spread, jar the marmalade.

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 fruit, pectin and tart flavor that give the marmalade its body and taste.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps the marmalade thicken and set.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness with cold water. Sugar and fruit pectin only set at a high enough concentration and temperature. Testing a drop in cold water shows whether the mixture has thickened enough; if it is undercooked, the marmalade will stay runny in the jar.

“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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