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 ↓
Apricots
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apricots
Gather apricots when they are dry and not too ripe.
Pare them as thin as possible and cut them in half.
Weigh the apricots and place them hollow side up on dishes.
Sprinkle their weight in powdered sugar over the apricots.
Cover them.
Let them sit for twelve hours.
Cook and jar
Transfer the apricots to a preserving pan.
Simmer gently until clear.
Skim off any scum.
Carefully remove the fruit with a colander spoon.
Place the fruit into small jars.
Boil the syrup until clear.
Pour the syrup over the fruit.
Seal and label
Cut a piece of paper slightly larger than the jar top, making several cuts about half an inch deep.
Brush the paper with beaten egg white.
Place the paper over the jar.
Press the edges under the rim.
Wait until dry.
Write the name on top.
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.
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Form the fruit that is cooked until clear and preserved in syrup.
- Loaf sugar
- Draws moisture out of the fruit and forms the syrup that preserves it.
The step that matters
Simmer gently until clear. Simmering gently keeps the apricot halves whole and lets the sugar syrup penetrate evenly. Boiling hard would 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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