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Quince and Apple Preserve

A preserve made from quinces and optional apples simmered in sugar syrup.

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 Apple Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare and core the quinces, leaving them whole or cutting them into pieces.

  2. Boil the quinces in enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Carefully remove the quinces and place them on a platter.

Make the syrup

  1. Add the sugar to the water and bring it to a boil.

  2. Return the quinces to the syrup and boil slowly until clear.

Add apples and jar

  1. To increase the quantity, use half to two-thirds the weight of sweet apples, pare, quarter, and core them.

  2. After removing the quinces, add the apples to the syrup and boil until red, clear, and tender.

  3. Place the quinces in jars and pour the syrup over them.

  4. Layer the quinces and apples in jars, alternating them, and cover with syrup.

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 main fruit, firm flesh and characteristic aroma that set the preserve's flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit while it cooks clear.
Sweet apples
Optional addition that increases the quantity and mildly sweetens the preserve.

The step that matters

Boil the quinces slowly in the syrup until clear. Quince is firm and needs gentle, prolonged simmering to become tender and translucent. Rapid boiling can break the fruit apart and leave it cloudy or tough.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits about as well
  3. Applethe original
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, 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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