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Canning Apples and Quinces

A preserved fruit mixture of apples and quinces canned in a sugar syrup.

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 ↓

Canning Apples and Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare and cut equal quantities of apples and quinces.

Cook the fruit

  1. Cook the quinces in enough water to cover them until tender.

  2. Remove the quinces and cook the apples in the same water.

Pack and seal

  1. In a jar or kettle, layer quinces and apples until all are used.

  2. Pour a syrup made of ½ pound sugar dissolved in a little water over the fruit.

  3. Let it stand overnight.

  4. The next day, heat thoroughly and seal in cans.

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
Firm, tart fruit that holds its shape and adds a distinctive aroma when cooked.
Apples
Softer fruit that cooks down and adds bulk and mild sweetness to the pack.
Sugar
Dissolved into syrup, it sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Cook the quinces until tender before adding the apples. Quinces are much firmer and take longer to soften than apples. Cooking them first lets both fruits reach a similar tenderness, so the apples do not turn to mush while the quinces are still hard.

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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