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Dessert

Apricots Whole

Whole apricots preserved in a ginger and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and ginger work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 341 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Apricots Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Pare the apricots thinly and remove the stones with a wooden skewer.

  2. Strew the powdered sugar over the apricots and let them stand for 12 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the apricots and white ginger, then simmer gently over moderate heat.

  2. When about half done, remove from heat and cover until nearly cold.

  3. Return to heat and boil gently until the syrup is clear.

Jar and serve

  1. Carefully transfer the apricots into small jars, placing a piece of silk crosswise to prevent them from rising.

  2. Boil the syrup a little longer until clear, then pour it over the apricots.

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 + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together341 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Ginger + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Apricot + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 that softens and turns tender in the warm syrup.
Powdered sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and sweetens it, forming the syrup.
White ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup gently until clear. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard keeps the apricots whole and intact, while slow heating lets the syrup clarify and the fruit hold its shape.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, olive. 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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