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Green Apricots

A method for preserving green apricots with salt, water, vinegar, mace, ginger, and capsicums.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and ginger work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 341 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Green Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Select the desired quantity of green apricots before the stone hardens.

  2. Rub the apricots with coarse sea salt to remove the down.

  3. Place them in a stone jar in a warm place, covered with salt and water, for 24 hours until they turn yellow.

Green the apricots

  1. Drain the liquid and set them over moderate heat with more salt and water, covered with vine leaves or cabbage leaves, until they turn green without boiling.

  2. If they are slow to green, change the salt, water, and leaves.

  3. Once green, dry the apricots and place them in jars.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil distilled vinegar with a small piece of mace and ginger, then pour it hot over the apricots.

  2. Repeat this process for five or six days, adding 2-3 capsicums.

  3. When cool, cover the jars with a bladder.

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 + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together341 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Ginger + capsicumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Apricot + capsicumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + capsicumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,160 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green apricots
Provide the fruit that is softened, greened and preserved as the main product.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and helps firm and preserve the fruit during salting.
Distilled vinegar
Acidifies the brine, preserving the fruit and giving it a sharp, tangy flavour.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the vinegar liquid.

The step that matters

Greening over moderate heat without boiling. Boiling would soften the apricots and break down their texture. Gentle heat, with leaves covering the fruit, lets the green colour develop while the flesh stays firm.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, vinegar, ginger, capsicum):

  1. Corianderfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, vinegar, ginger, capsicum. 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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