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 Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Stew as many apples as desired and strain the juice.
Pare and core the quinces, then chop them finely.
Place the chopped quinces in a pot and cover with apple juice, adding a little water if necessary.
Cook until the fruit is tender.
Carefully skim out the fruit, strain, and measure the juice.
Add sugar to the juice as for jelly and boil until almost jellied.
Drop in the fruit and cook until it begins to jelly.
Pour into jelly glasses.
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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Quince + appletop 1% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together506 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
Swap the quince
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar):
- Pearfits better
- Vanillafits about as well
- Apricotfits about as well
- 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.
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