Skip to main content
Dessert

Quince Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking quince pieces in a sugar syrup until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 4 cups water with 4 cups sugar until it boils.

  2. Skim off any foam.

Cook the quinces

  1. Quarter the quinces if large; otherwise, halve them.

  2. Add the quinces to the syrup and cook slowly until they are tender.

  3. Remove the quinces.

  4. Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens, but do not overboil to avoid darkening.

Jar and store

  1. Strain the syrup over the quinces in jars and seal them.

  2. Store in a cool, dark place.

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 flavor and natural pectin that helps the syrup thicken and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it concentrates while boiling, thickens the syrup and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Stop boiling the syrup once it thickens. Prolonged boiling caramelizes the sugar, which darkens the syrup and can give it a burnt, bitter flavor. Watch closely as it thickens and stop in time.

“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 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes