Why it works: Sugar and apricot 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 ↓
Compote d’Abricots — Compote of Apricots
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apricots
Blanch the apricots in boiling water until soft, then transfer them to cold water.
Make the syrup
In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water; bring to a boil.
Add the apricots to the syrup and let them boil three to four times.
Serve
Skim the syrup well, arrange the apricots on a dessert plate, and pour the syrup over them.
Serve hot or cold.
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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Sugar + apricottop 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the compote and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that coats the fruit.
- Apricots
- Provide the fruit, which softens during blanching and then simmers in the syrup.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar to make the syrup and carries the fruit's flavour into it.
The step that matters
Skim the syrup well. Skimming removes foam and loose particles that rise during boiling, so the syrup stays clear and clean-tasting instead of 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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