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 ↓
Apple Tart with Quince
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the apples as you would for an apple pie and place them in a dish.
Stew the quinces with a little water, sugar, and butter until soft.
Pour the stewed quinces over the apples.
Add a layer of pounded sugar and the grated lemon rind on top.
Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.
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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Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together506 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together336 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, quince, sugar, butter):
- Pearfits better
- Apricotfits better
- Plumfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apple, quince, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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