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Abricots a l’Eau De Vie

Apricots preserved in a clarified sugar syrup and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Abricots a l’Eau De Vie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Choose fine, not quite ripe apricots and remove the down with a cloth.

  2. Prick each apricot with a large pin.

  3. Blanch the apricots in boiling water for a moment, then drain and dry them.

Make the syrup and cook the apricots

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pound of sugar with 1 pint of water and heat until clarified.

  2. Add the apricots to the syrup and boil briefly.

  3. Remove from heat and let the apricots sit in the syrup overnight.

  4. Strain the apricots the next day and boil the syrup again several times.

  5. Return the apricots to the syrup, simmer briefly, then remove from heat.

Bottle and preserve

  1. Once cooled, place the apricots in large bottles, adding the syrup.

  2. Fill the bottles with brandy and cork tightly.

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 softened and flavoured by the syrup and brandy.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol that helps keep the preserved fruit stable.

The step that matters

Pricking and blanching the apricots. Pricking lets syrup penetrate the fruit, and brief blanching loosens the skin and helps the fruit absorb sugar evenly. Skipping these steps can leave fruit tough or unevenly sweetened.

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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