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Drink

Quince Wine

A fermented beverage made by boiling quinces, sugar, lemon, and yeast, then aging for three months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Quince Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Wipe the quinces with a cloth.

  2. Grate the quinces without touching the core.

  3. Put the grated quinces into 1 gallon of boiling water.

  4. Boil gently for 15 minutes.

Make the wine

  1. Strain the mixture into a pan over 2 pounds of refined sugar.

  2. Add the peels and juice of 2 lemons.

  3. Stir until cool.

  4. Place a slice of bread with a little yeast on it into the mixture.

  5. Cover the mixture tightly.

  6. Let it stand covered until the next day.

  7. Remove the bread and lemon peels.

  8. Keep the wine for 3 months before bottling.

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 + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Quince + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Provide the fruit flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Refined sugar
Sweetens the wine and feeds the yeast fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol, turning the juice into wine.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Grating the quinces without touching the core. Quince cores and seeds contain bitter compounds and tannins that can spoil the flavour of the wine, so keeping the core out of the grated fruit keeps the wine clean-tasting.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quince, sugar, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, sugar, bread. 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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