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Apricot Chutney

A chutney made with apricots, raisins, chillies, garlic, ginger, mustard seed, salt, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Apricot Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the chillies, garlic, ginger, and mustard seed with some vinegar.

  2. Boil the apricots (sliced if using whole) with 1 qt of vinegar.

  3. In another pot, boil the brown sugar in the remaining qt of vinegar until clear.

Combine and cook

  1. Mix all ingredients with the boiled fruit and the sugar mixture.

  2. Stir the raisins and ensure you have the full quantities of all ingredients.

  3. Boil until the chutney reaches a proper consistency.

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. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ginger + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together341 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ginger + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the fruit base and body of the chutney as they soften when boiled.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the chutney as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the chutney and balances the sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the finished chutney.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and flavour that mellows during long cooking.

The step that matters

Boil until the chutney reaches a proper consistency. Cooking long enough lets excess moisture evaporate and the sugar and fruit thicken the mixture. Stopping too early leaves it runny and less stable for storage.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, ginger, mustard, apricot, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, ginger, mustard, apricot, sugar, vinegar. 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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