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Presekyed Quinces

A quince preserve made by boiling quince 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 ↓

Presekyed Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and core the quinces, then place them in cold water.

  2. Strain the quinces from the water and prepare a syrup by combining 1 pint of water with 1 pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

Cook

  1. Bring the syrup to a boil, then add the quinces and boil until soft.

  2. Continue boiling the syrup down as you would for other preserves.

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 becomes tender and firm-textured when cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it concentrates in the syrup, helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup down. Sugar concentrates as the syrup boils, and that concentration is what keeps the fruit preserved. Boiling it down too little leaves the preserve wetter and less stable, while boiling too long can make it sticky or hard. Watch the syrup rather than the clock.

“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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