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Apricot Jam

A jam made from ripe apricots, sugar, blanched apricot kernels, and apple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apricot Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the apricots into pieces and remove the stones.

  2. Mash the apricots in a large copper preserving pan over medium heat, stirring constantly.

  3. Force the mashed apricots through a colander or wire sieve.

  4. Return the pulp to the pan.

Cook the jam

  1. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. For every pound of pulp, add a pound of sugar boiled to caramel height.

  3. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes, stirring constantly.

Pot and seal

  1. Pour the jam into pound or half-pound pots, topping with apple jelly.

  2. Seal with a brandy paper and tie a double paper over the pot.

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 + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Ripe apricots
Provide the fruit pulp that forms the body and flavour of the jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep by binding water.
Apricot kernels (blanched)
Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the jam.
Apple jelly
Adds natural pectin and acidity to help the jam set.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp with sugar. Sugar must be added to the pulp and boiled for the full time while stirring constantly. Too little boiling leaves the jam runny, and scorching on the base of the pan can give a burnt taste.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotthe original
  4. Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. 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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