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Dessert

Quince Sweetmeats

A preserved quince confection made by stewing quinces in a sugar syrup.

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 Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Wash the quinces, steam them until they can be pierced to the core with a straw, then let them cool.

  2. If preserving whole, core them before peeling; otherwise, peel and cut into fourths or eighths.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. For every pound of fruit, combine 1 pound of sugar with ½ cup of boiling water to make a syrup.

  2. Boil and skim the syrup, then add the fruit and cover the kettle.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, then remove the cover; if the syrup is not clear, let it stand for a few moments.

  4. Transfer the fruit to hot jars and seal immediately.

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 that is cooked until tender and set in the sugar syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that preserves it.

The step that matters

Steaming the quinces until tender. Quinces are very firm when raw, so they must be cooked until a straw pierces the core. Undercooked fruit stays hard and will not become tender in the syrup, while the syrup then carries the sweetness through the fruit.

“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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