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Dessert

Quince Preserves

A preserve made by cooking quinces with water and sugar until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,444 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare, quarter, and core the quinces, saving the skins and cores.

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

  3. Simmer until tender but do not let them break.

  4. Remove the quinces and spread them on dishes to cool.

Make the syrup

  1. Add the saved parings and cores to the cooking water and simmer for one hour.

  2. Strain the liquid through a jelly bag.

  3. For each pint of liquid, add one pound of sugar.

  4. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

  5. Add the quinces and boil for fifteen minutes.

  6. Remove from heat and let it sit in a deep dish for twenty-four hours.

Finish and jar

  1. Drain off the syrup and boil it again.

  2. Add the quinces and let them cool for fifteen minutes.

  3. Remove the quinces and spread them on dishes to cool.

  4. Boil the syrup until thick, then fill jars with the quinces until two-thirds full 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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quinces
Provide the fruit, which turns tender and firm-textured when simmered and preserved in sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, when boiled into syrup, preserves it and thickens the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer the quinces until tender but not broken. Quinces need long, gentle cooking to soften their firm flesh. Overcooking makes them fall apart, while undercooking leaves them hard, so the pieces hold their shape in the preserve.

“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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