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Dessert

Peach, Apple, or Quince Leather

A dried fruit leather made from peach, apple, or quince, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach, Apple, or Quince Leather

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fruit pulp

  1. Peel and cut the fruit into small pieces.

  2. Boil the fruit with as little water as possible, mashing it with a spoon while it boils.

  3. Add the sugar and boil for another 15 to 20 minutes.

Dry and finish

  1. Spread the mixture very thin on a flat tin or platter to dry.

  2. Dry in the sun under netting or in a cool oven with the door open.

  3. Allow several days for drying.

  4. Cut into strips, roll in sugar, and roll up or leave in plain lengths.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Fruit
Provides the main body, flavour and pectin that lets the mixture set into a sheet.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the leather while it dries.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture very thin. A thin layer dries evenly and quickly, while a thick layer stays moist in the centre and can spoil before it becomes leather.

“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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