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Dessert

Quince and Apple Jelly

A preserved jelly made from equal parts quince and apple, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince 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 Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Core and cut the apples and quinces into small pieces.

  2. Place the quinces in a preserving kettle and add enough water to cover them.

Cook the fruit

  1. Boil the quinces until soft.

  2. Add the apples and continue boiling until the mixture is nearly a pulp.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag without pressing.

Make the jelly

  1. For each quart of juice, add 2 pounds of loaf sugar and boil together for half an hour.

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. Apple + quincetop 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
Provide natural pectin and tartness that help the mixture set into jelly.
Tart apples
Add extra pectin and acidity that support gel formation and flavor.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and concentrating the pectin.

The step that matters

Straining without pressing. Squeezing the bag forces cloudy pulp through, which makes the jelly murky. Letting juice drip slowly keeps it clear.

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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