Skip to main content
Dessert

Quince and Apple Butter

A fruit butter made from quinces and apples, sweetened with sugar and cooked to a thick marmalade consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Quince and Apple Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, quarter, and core the quinces, tying the cores and peelings in a thin cloth.

  2. Place the quinces and tied cores in a porcelain-lined kettle with enough cold water to cover them.

  3. Boil gently until the quinces begin to soften.

  4. Meanwhile, peel, quarter, and core the apples, then add them to the quinces.

Cook and finish

  1. Continue boiling until the mixture becomes a pulp.

  2. Add the sugar and boil the mixture until it reaches the consistency of thick marmalade, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  3. Cool the butter and store it as directed for pickles and sauces.

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

Quinces
Provide the main fruit body and the pectin that helps the butter set thick.
Sour apples
Add acidity and extra pectin, balancing the sweetness and helping the mixture set.
Sugar
Sweetens the butter and, as it concentrates, helps it thicken into a spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Stirring while the sugar is added. Sugar-rich fruit mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the kettle as they thicken, so constant stirring prevents burning and keeps the flavor clean.

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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesQuince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes