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Dessert

Apricot Conserve

A sweet preserve made from apricots, pineapple, sugar, almonds, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apricot Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the apricots and soak them overnight in 9 cups of water.

Cook the preserve

  1. Cut the pineapple slices into quarters and add them with their juice to the apricots.

  2. Cook the mixture just below boiling until the apricots are tender, stirring frequently.

  3. Add the sugar and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the lemon juice and the blanched almonds cut into strips, then cook for 5 more minutes.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the conserve and seal it once it has cooled.

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 + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pineapple + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 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

Dried apricots
Provide the main fruit body and bulk, softening into the preserve as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the preserve and preserve it for storage.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavour through the preserve.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour and supports setting.

The step that matters

Cook just below boiling until the apricots are tender. Gentle heat softens the dried fruit evenly without breaking it down too fast or scorching the sugar added later. Stirring frequently prevents sticking and burning on the base of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, pineapple, sugar, almond. 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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