Name: Quince and Apple Pie
Ingredients: quinces (as many as apples or fewer); sugar (to taste); pie crusts (1 or 2, as preferred)

Why it works: Quince and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,444 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Quince and Apple Pie

Ingredients

quinces (as many as apples or fewer)
sugar (to taste)
pie crusts (1 or 2, as preferred)

Directions

Cook quinces without sugar until soft enough to strain through a sieve.
Sweeten the strained mixture to taste.
If using one crust, place strips of crust across the top for decoration.
Alternatively, you can use canned fruit.

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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,444 recipes

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

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

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Quince and Apple Pie