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Quinces with Sweet Apples

A preserve made from quinces and sweet apples boiled with sugar.

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 ↓

Quinces with Sweet Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Pare, quarter, and core sweet apples to weigh one third as much as the quinces.

  2. Boil the quinces in water until soft, then remove them carefully.

  3. Add the sweet apples to the syrup and boil until they look red and clear, about 1.5 hours.

Jar and seal

  1. Layer the quinces and apples alternately in jars.

  2. For preservation, use 12 ounces of sugar for every pound of fruit, layering sugar with quinces in a jar.

  3. Seal the jar tightly and cover with paper.

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. 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
Contain natural pectin, helping the preserve set and hold its shape.
Sweet apples
Add bulk and mild sweetness, softening into the fruit as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Boil the apples until red and clear. Stop when the apples turn red and clear. Underdone pieces stay firm and opaque, while overcooked apples break down and make the preserve mushy.

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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