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Dessert

Apple and Quince Butter

A sweet spread made by cooking apples and quinces with water and sugar until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and apple 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 and Quince Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and rub off the down from the quinces, then peel and core them.

  2. Peel and core an equal quantity of apples.

Make the juice

  1. Cover the parings and cores with water and cook for 30 minutes, then strain.

Cook and jar

  1. Cut up the quinces and apples, and cook them in the strained juice until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve, add half its weight in sugar, and cook slowly until thick.

  3. Turn into hot, dry jars and seal.

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. Quince + appletop 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. Quince + sugartop 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

Quinces
Their natural pectin helps the butter set thick and hold its shape.
Apples
Their pectin and body add structure and help the purée thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the mixture reduces, helps give the butter its spreadable thickness.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until thick. Sugar is added to a fruit purée that still holds a lot of water. Cooking gently while it reduces lets the moisture evaporate evenly and avoids scorching on the base of the pan, which would give a burnt flavour.

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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