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Preserved Apricots for Tarts, or Desserts

Preserved apricots are apricots halved, blanched, and set in a clarified sugar syrup, then stored in jars with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Preserved Apricots for Tarts, or Desserts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Cut the apricots in halves.

  2. Blanch the kernels.

  3. Add the blanched kernels to the apricot halves.

Make the syrup and cook the fruit

  1. Boil 14 ounces of clarified sugar with 1 cup of water until it reaches a syrup consistency.

  2. Add the apricots to the boiling syrup.

  3. Let the apricots stand in the syrup until cold.

  4. Boil the syrup again.

  5. Add the apricots to the syrup again.

  6. Let them cool.

Pot and cover

  1. Transfer the apricot halves into small pots or glasses.

  2. If the syrup is too thin, boil it again.

  3. Cool the syrup.

  4. Pour the syrup over the fruit.

  5. Cover the jars with paper dipped in brandy.

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 + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 is cooked and preserved in the sugar syrup.
Clarified sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to the right consistency. Sugar syrup must be boiled enough to thicken to a syrup consistency. If it is too thin, the fruit is less sweet and less well preserved, so the record says to boil it again.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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