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Canning Apples with Quinces

A preserved fruit mixture of apples and quinces canned with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Canning Apples with Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the quinces and apples.

  2. Cook the quinces and apples together until tender.

  3. Add sugar to the mixture according to the tartness of the apples.

Can and seal

  1. Fill air-tight cans with the hot fruit.

  2. Seal the cans.

  3. Cool the sealed cans for an hour or two.

  4. Check the seals.

  5. Turn the cans upside down overnight to ensure there are no leaks.

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. 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
Their natural pectin helps the fruit set and gives a firm, tender texture when cooked.
Apples
They add pectin and natural tartness, and their body helps thicken the cooked fruit.
Sugar
It adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Seal the cans airtight. A tight seal keeps air and microbes out of the hot fruit. Checking the seals and inverting the cans reveals leaks before the fruit spoils in storage.

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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