Name: Canned Quinces and Pears
Ingredients: 4 lbs quinces; 2 lbs pears (Seckel); 2 lbs sugar; 1 qt water

Why it works: Quince and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Canned Quinces and Pears

Ingredients

4 lbs quinces
2 lbs pears (Seckel)
2 lbs sugar
1 qt water

Directions

Prepare

Pare and quarter the quinces.
Pare the pears and leave them whole.

Cook and bottle

Simmer the quinces and pears in a covered dish in the oven for 2 to 3 hours.
Bottle the mixture 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.

Quince + peartop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together133 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,079 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,444 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Quinces: Provide the main fruit flavour and firm texture that holds up during long slow cooking.
Pears: Add sweet, delicate fruit flavour and soften into the mixture as it cooks.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit for bottling.