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To Preserve Quinces

This recipe preserves quinces by boiling them and then storing them in clarified 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 ↓

To Preserve Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare and core the quinces, keeping some whole and cutting others into large slices.

  2. Boil the quinces in a kettle until a straw can easily pass through them.

  3. Remove the quinces and let them cool on dishes.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and the water used for boiling the quinces.

  2. Boil the syrup until clarified, then add the quinces.

  3. Cover with a large plate to keep them light colored and boil slowly until clear.

  4. Periodically remove the quinces to cool on dishes before returning them to the kettle to cook more.

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
Firm fruit that softens on cooking and turns tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in the cooking water, forms the syrup that preserves it.

The step that matters

Covering the quinces while they simmer. A plate over the fruit keeps it submerged and limits contact with air, which helps prevent browning so the quinces stay light colored while they turn clear.

“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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