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Dessert

Apricots in Vinegar

A preserved apricot dish made by boiling apricots in a sweet vinegar solution with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apricots in Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the vinegar with the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Skim the mixture well.

Pack the fruit

  1. Add the apricots and heat thoroughly.

  2. Drain the apricots and pack them in jars, layering with cinnamon and cloves.

  3. Boil the drained vinegar with Jamaica peppers.

  4. Pour the hot vinegar over the packed fruit and seal the jars.

Reboil and reseal

  1. After 2-3 days, pour off the liquid, boil it again, and return it to the jars, sealing 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Apricot + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 body and the sweet-tart flavour that the syrup soaks into.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the pickle stable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice to the packed fruit.
Cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma to the packed fruit.

The step that matters

Add the apricots and heat thoroughly. Gentle heating softens the fruit slightly so it can absorb the sugary vinegar. Overheating breaks the apricots down into mush and makes the jars look and eat poorly.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove, pepper. 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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