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Abricots » !Eau De Vie-—Apricots in Brandy

A preserved apricot dessert made by boiling apricots in 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 » !Eau De Vie-—Apricots in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

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

  2. Prick each apricot with a large pin.

  3. Blanch the apricots in boiling water for a moment.

  4. Drain and dry the apricots.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a pot, combine 2 pounds of sugar with 1 pint of water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the apricots to the syrup.

  4. Boil the apricots briefly.

  5. Remove the mixture from heat.

  6. Let the apricots sit in the syrup overnight.

  7. Strain the apricots.

  8. Boil the syrup again several times, repeating the process with the apricots.

Bottle and preserve

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

  2. Add the syrup to the bottles without letting it candy.

  3. Fill the bottles with brandy.

  4. Cork them 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
Fruit that becomes tender and flavourful as it is cooked and steeped in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as a thick syrup, preserves it by drawing out water.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol that helps preserve the apricots in the bottle.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup repeatedly without letting it candy. Repeated boiling concentrates the sugar syrup so it preserves the fruit. If the syrup is overcooked or allowed to cool into a crystalline state, it candies and the apricots lose their soft, syrupy texture.

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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