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Dessert

Preserved Quinces

A method of preserving quinces by boiling, then cooking them 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: 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 ↓

Preserved Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the quinces in half, pare, and remove the cores.

  2. Weigh the quinces and use 1 pound of sugar for each pound of quinces.

Poach the quinces

  1. Place the quinces in a kettle.

  2. Cover with cold water.

  3. Boil until tender enough to pass a broom splint through.

  4. Remove the quinces one at a time.

  5. Place them on dishes to cool and drain.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a kettle, combine sugar with enough water to dissolve it.

  2. Add the quinces to the syrup.

  3. Cook until they turn a light color, skimming frequently.

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

Fine apple quinces
Main fruit; boiling softens its firm flesh so it can take up the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in syrup, helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Cooking the quinces in the syrup until light in color. Sugar syrup darkens and can overcook at high heat, so the color is watched closely. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the syrup and spoil its clarity.

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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