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Dessert

Quince Preserves

A preserve made by boiling apples and quinces with sugar to form a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple jelly

  1. Add the golden pippin apples to the boiling water in a large pot, without peeling or cutting them.

  2. Cover the pot and boil quickly until the water thickens into a jelly.

Make the quince jam

  1. For every cup of apple jelly, add ½ pound of sugar and boil, skimming off any foam.

  2. Add the whole quinces to the syrup and boil rapidly, then skim the syrup.

  3. Test for jelling by placing some in a glass.

  4. Use 1 pound of quinces for every pound of sugar and jelly.

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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + quincetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Apple and sugar 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

Golden pippin apples
Their natural pectin helps the apple liquid thicken into a jelly that sets the jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the pectin and acid, helps it set and keeps it preserved.
Quinces
Supply the main fruit flavor and additional pectin that helps the jam firm up.

The step that matters

Testing for jelling. Sugar, pectin and acid must reach the right concentration to set. Stopping too early leaves the jam runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and dull.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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