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Apple and Quince Preserves

Preserves made from Baldwin apples and quinces boiled with sugar syrup.

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 ↓

Apple and Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the Baldwin apples.

  2. Add one-third as many quinces, pared, cored, and cut into small pieces.

  3. Boil the quinces until tender.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with the water from the boiled quinces and an equal amount of sugar as the total weight of apples and quinces.

  2. Boil the syrup. Skim the syrup.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the quinces and apples to the syrup. Boil for fifteen minutes.

  2. Carefully dip out the fruit and place it into jelly glasses.

  3. Boil the syrup until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  4. Pour the syrup over the fruit.

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. 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

Baldwin apples
Provide the bulk of the fruit and a mild, tart flavor.
Quinces
Add firm texture and aroma, and their natural pectin helps the preserves set.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and helps them thicken and keep as a preserve.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it reaches a jelly consistency. Stopping too early leaves the syrup runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff or caramelize. The syrup must reach the gel point, where sugar and pectin set when cooled.

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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