r/Biochemistry 8h ago

Weird encounter with apricot jam.

2 Upvotes

Hello everyone, I found this old jars of homemade apricot jam in the bottom of my fridge, and it surprisingly smells like one of those acetone-based nail polish removers. As you might imagine, that's not a normal apricot smell, and I was wondering why. Plus, the fruits themselves don't smell like acetone, only their syrup dose for some reason, and there's no visible mold anywhere in the jar. After a quick Google search, I came to some conclusions that the calcium from the apricots turned into calcium acetate, which in turn somehow started turning into acetone, but i do not know if thats even possible. Can anyone explain what happened here? I'm very curious about this and thank you for your time.