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 ↓
Preserved Apricots
Ingredients
Directions
Halve and peel the apricots. If they are not quite ripe, boil them until the skin can be easily removed.
Place the apricots in a dish, hollow side down, and sprinkle them with an equal weight of white sugar.
Let the apricots sit for several hours to release their juices.
Transfer the apricots, sugar, and juice to a preserving pan and simmer until the fruit is clear.
Carefully place the fruit into jars and pour the syrup over them.
Optionally, add a few apricot kernels to enhance the flavor.
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.
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
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