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Dessert

Apricot Preserve

A preserve made from apricots, nut meats, sugar, and water, cooked until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select good apricots and cut them in halves.

  2. Crack the nuts and use all the nut meats.

Cook and seal

  1. Combine apricots, nut meats, enough sugar to suit your taste, and a little water in a pot.

  2. Cook together for 20 minutes or until done.

  3. Seal the preserve while hot.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Apricot + meattop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the fruit base, giving the preserve its main flavor and body as they cook down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit by binding up water.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor to the fruit.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sugar. 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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