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Dessert

Quince and Apple Preserve

A preserve made from sour apples and quinces simmered in a 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 ↓

Quince and Apple Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

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

  2. Pare, core, and cut the quinces into eighths.

Cook the preserve

  1. Combine the water and sugar in a pot to make a syrup.

  2. Add the quinces to the syrup and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the apples and cook until both fruits are tender and well preserved.

  4. Seal the preserve in jars.

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
Firm fruit that holds its shape and adds a distinctive aroma as it cooks.
Sour apples
Adds tartness and body, balancing the sweetness of the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Cooking the quinces before the apples. Quinces are much firmer than apples and need a head start in the syrup. Adding both together would leave the apples overcooked or the quinces still hard.

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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