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Dessert

Compote of Quinces

A compote of quinces simmered in sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Compote of Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Remove the cores from the quinces.

  2. Scald the quinces in boiling water.

  3. Peel the quinces and cut each in half.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the quinces in clarified sugar with lemon peel and juice.

  2. Once cooked, place the quinces in a serving dish.

  3. Boil the syrup. Add red wine and more sugar to the syrup.

  4. Pour the syrup over the quinces.

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 + red winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Lemon + red winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together779 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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 main body and flavour of the compote as they soften during stewing.
Clarified sugar
Sweetens the fruit and syrup and helps build the glossy syrup.
Red wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the syrup, colouring it as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit.

The step that matters

Stew the quinces gently in the syrup. Quinces are hard and fibrous when raw and need long, gentle cooking to soften and turn tender. Rapid boiling can break the fruit apart before the flesh becomes tender, so a low, steady simmer keeps the halves intact.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, sugar, red wine. 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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