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Dessert

Quince or Apple Preserves

Preserves of quinces boiled with sugar and optional apples until syrupy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Quince or Apple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare and core the quinces, leaving them whole or cutting them up as preferred.

  2. Boil the quinces in enough water to cover them until tender.

Make the syrup

  1. Carefully remove the quinces.

  2. Place them on a platter.

  3. Add sugar to the boiling water.

  4. Return the quinces.

  5. Boil slowly until the syrup is clear.

Pack the jars

  1. Place the quinces in jars.

  2. Pour the syrup over them.

Add the apples

  1. Use half or two-thirds the weight of sweet apples.

  2. Pare, quarter and core the apples.

  3. Add the apples to the syrup.

  4. Boil until they are tender and begin to look red and clear.

  5. Layer the quinces and apples in jars alternately.

  6. Cover with syrup.

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. Sugar + appletop 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).

Sugar and apple 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
Firm fruit whose natural pectin helps the preserve gel as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, with the fruit's pectin, helps it thicken and set.
Sweet apples
Add extra pectin and body to the preserve, supporting a set.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup slowly until it is clear. A gentle simmer keeps the fruit whole and the syrup clear. Vigorous boiling breaks the fruit apart and clouds the syrup.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quince, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits about as well
  3. Applethe original
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, 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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