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Dessert

Apricot, or Any Plum Jam

A jam made from apricots or plums, sweetened with sugar and optionally flavored with bitter almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apricot, or Any Plum Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stones and blemishes from the apricots.

  2. Place the apricots in a clean saucepan with ½ cup of water over low heat.

  3. Once scalded, rub the mixture through a fine sieve to obtain the pulp.

Make the jam

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the pulp with 2 pounds of sifted sugar over medium‑high heat.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming off any foam, and add the apricot kernels and blanched bitter almonds if using.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

Jar

  1. Remove from heat and pour into jars, sealing them as desired.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Apricot + sugartop 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

Apricots
Supply the fruit pulp that gives the jam its body, flavor and natural pectin.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with heat, helps it thicken and keeps it preserved.
Blanched bitter almonds
Add a faint bitter almond aroma to the jam.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly. The jam is rich in sugar and can scorch on the bottom of the pan or boil over with foam. Constant stirring and a steady boil prevent sticking and let the mixture reach a thick, spreadable set.

“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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