Skip to main content
Dessert

Apricots, &C., to Bottle

Preserves fruit by packing it with sugar and bottling it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apricot and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apricots, &C., to Bottle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare clean, dry, wide-mouthed bottles.

  2. Fill each bottle with fruit.

  3. Add ½ lb of caster sugar to each bottle.

  4. Cork the bottles tightly.

Cook and seal

  1. Place the bottles in a large kettle or pan, separated by cloths.

  2. Fill the kettle with cold water.

  3. Bring the water to a gentle boil.

  4. Once boiling, move the kettle to the side of the stove and let it cool completely.

  5. Remove the bottles, wipe them, and seal them upright in a cool place.

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 + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + apricottop 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

Fruit
Provides the main flavour and bulk of the preserve, softening as it gently cooks in the bottle.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it by binding water and inhibiting spoilage microbes.

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a gentle boil. Heat must reach the fruit inside the sealed bottles to cook and preserve it. A gentle boil heats the contents evenly without forcing the corks out or cracking the glass.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotthe original
  3. Pearfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, peach. 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.

More fruit preserves recipes

Spiced 5Dried 3 See all 91 →

You might also like

Mixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesPeach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipes