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Canned Fruits

A method for preserving fruit in syrup by cooking, canning, and sealing.

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 ↓

Canned Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Select fair, not overripe fruit.

  2. Remove skin and seeds from apples and quinces, and stones from cherries.

  3. For hard fruit, cook in clear water until tender.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a preserving kettle, make syrup with 1 cup water and 2 cups sugar. Skim carefully.

  2. Drop in the fruit a little at a time, keeping it in shape.

  3. Remove when tender.

Jar and seal

  1. Place fruit in hot jars and let them stand in a pan of boiling water.

  2. Fill jars with syrup until overflowing and seal tightly.

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 + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Peach + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Apple + pineappletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Peach + quincetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in the syrup, helps preserve it and hold its shape.
Fruit
Provides the flesh that softens during cooking and forms the body of the canned product.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to make the syrup that fills the jars and covers the fruit.

The step that matters

Drop in the fruit a little at a time, keeping it in shape. Adding too much fruit at once drops the syrup's temperature and can cause pieces to break apart and cook unevenly, so the fruit may lose its shape.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, peach, pineapple, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, peach, pineapple, syrup. 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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