Name: Canning Fruits
Ingredients: 1 pint sugar; 1 quart water; peaches; quince; grapes; currants; raspberries; lemon peel

Why it works: Peach and quince share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 46 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Canning Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve sugar in water over heat, stirring constantly to prevent scorching.
For canning, use 1 pint of sugar to 1 quart of water.
Prepare peaches by rubbing off fuzz with a coarse towel before peeling.
Canned peaches can be improved by adding whole peaches or a few stones to each can.
For grapes, avoid pressing the skins too closely to prevent clinkers.
Mix currants with an equal weight of raspberries for flavor.
Canning pears with quinces or lemon peel enhances their taste.

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.

Peach + quincetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together46 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Peach + grapetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together218 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Quince + grapetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together96 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together336 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together947 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, peach, quince, grape, lemon):

Pearfits better
Apricotfits better
Applefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, peach, quince, grape, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.