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Dessert

Quince Jam or Cheese

A sweet preserve made from quince and optional apples, cooked until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Quince Jam or Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Peel and core the quinces, then slice them.

  2. Place the sliced quinces in a stewpan with enough water to float them.

Make the jam

  1. Stir carefully from the bottom and stew until reduced to a pulp.

  2. Weigh the pulp and add ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of pulp.

  3. Continue to stew until the mixture sets.

  4. Transfer to pots and cover 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. Quince + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + appletop 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).

Sugar and apple 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
Provide the fruit pulp and natural pectin that help the jam thicken and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep as a preserve.

The step that matters

Continue to stew until the mixture sets. Jam thickens as water evaporates and sugar and pectin gel together. Stopping too early leaves a runny preserve, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

Swap the quince

The recipe marks quince as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, apple):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. 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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