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Dessert

Apricot, or Any Plum Jam

A jam made by boiling apricots or plums with sugar, water, and optional almonds and kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apricot, or Any Plum Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the stones and blemishes from the apricots.

  2. Place the apricots in a clean saucepan with ½ cup of water over low heat until scalded, then rub the mixture through a fine sieve to obtain the pulp.

Cook the jam

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the pulp with 2 pounds of sifted sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil over medium heat, skimming off any foam.

  3. Add the apricot kernels and blanched bitter almonds, if using.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. Remove from heat and pour into jars, sealing them properly.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. 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 pulp that sets into the jam's body and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it cooks down, helps it set and keeps it preserved.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp with sugar. Once sugar is added, the mixture must boil and be stirred constantly for the full 15 minutes. Sugar and fruit pectin need sustained heat to reach the concentration at which the jam sets, and stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the apricot

The recipe marks apricot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond. 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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