Skip to main content
Dessert

To Dry Apricots

Apricots are dried by simmering them in sugar syrup and then spreading them to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Dry Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gently wipe the apricots and split them open to remove the pits.

  2. Weigh the apricots and arrange them in a deep dish.

  3. Sprinkle 14 ounces of sugar over each pound of apricots.

Make the syrup

  1. The next day, transfer the apricots and sugar into a preserving pan.

  2. Heat the apricots slowly and simmer for 6 to 8 minutes until tender.

Dry

  1. Let the apricots sit in the syrup for 2 to 3 days.

  2. Drain the apricots and spread them out on dishes to dry.

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 body that softens in syrup and then dries into a chewy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out moisture to form a preserving syrup.

The step that matters

Heat the apricots slowly and simmer until tender. Gentle heat lets the sugar penetrate the fruit while keeping the apricots whole. Hard boiling breaks the skins and turns the fruit mushy.

“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.

You might also like

Apricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipesMixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes