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Dessert

Spiced Quince

A preserved quince dish flavored with cinnamon, ginger, and mace, sweetened with sugar and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Quince

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine quince pulp, vinegar, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Place cinnamon, ginger, and mace in a spice bag and add to the pot.

  3. Simmer the mixture slowly for 2 to 3 hours.

  4. Seal the spiced quince in jars.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Quince + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Quince + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Quince pulp
Provides the main fruit body and flavor of the preserve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture as it thickens.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 2 to 3 hours. Gentle heat lets the quince soften and thicken evenly while sugar dissolves and concentrates, without scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, ginger. 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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