Name: Quince and Apricot Jelly
Ingredients: 1½ pounds sugar; quince; apricot

Why it works: Quince and apricot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince and Apricot Jelly

Ingredients

1½ pounds sugar
quince
apricot

Directions

Prepare quince and apricot as directed.
Add 1½ pounds of sugar to the fruit.
Finish the jelly as previously instructed.

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.

Quince + apricottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + quincetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,444 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).