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Quince and Sweet Apple Preserves

Preserves made from quinces and sweet apples cooked with sugar and water.

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 and Sweet Apple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the quinces and apples.

  2. Quarter the quinces and apples.

  3. Core the quinces and apples.

Partly cook the fruit

  1. Boil the quinces separately in enough water to cover them until half done.

  2. Boil the apples separately in enough water to cover them until half done.

  3. Remove the quinces with a perforated skimmer.

  4. Remove the apples with a perforated skimmer.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Add the sugar to the cooking liquid.

  2. Boil until it becomes syrupy.

  3. Add the fruit back to the syrup.

  4. Boil slowly until it can be pierced with a straw.

Pack and seal

  1. Layer the fruit in jars, reaching within a third of the top.

  2. Pour the syrup over the fruit.

  3. Seal the jars when cool.

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
Firm, high-pectin fruit that helps the preserves set and gives a fragrant flavor.
Apples
Add pectin and body, and their milder flavor balances the quince.
Sugar
Preserves the fruit and thickens the syrup, helping it set.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the fruit can be pierced with a straw. The fruit must turn fully tender and the syrup must concentrate. Boiling too hard can break the pieces apart, while stopping too early leaves the fruit firm and the syrup thin, so the preserves may not set.

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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