Skip to main content
Dessert

Pickled Quince

A pickled quince prepared by cooking quinces, making a sugar syrup, and steeping them in vinegar with cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Quince and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 164 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Quince

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Halve, core, and peel the quinces.

  2. Add enough water to cover the quinces and cook until soft.

  3. Remove the quinces with a fork and drain them.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. In the same water, add half the weight of sugar and boil to create a syrup.

  2. Scald 1 quart of vinegar with 2 ounces of cloves.

  3. Add the syrup to the vinegar and pour it hot 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 + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Quince + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. 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
Raw fruit that softens when cooked, becoming tender enough to pickle and eat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, boiled into a syrup, balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, spiced aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Cook the quinces until soft. Raw quinces are hard and tough. They need to be cooked until tender so they can take up the syrup and vinegar and eat smoothly. Underdone fruit stays firm and gritty, while overcooked fruit breaks apart.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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

You might also like

Quince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes