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Dessert

Canned Quinces

A preserved fruit product made by cooking quinces in syrup and canning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Canned Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, quarter, pare, and core the quinces.

Cook

  1. Cook the quinces in boiling water until partially soft, then remove them.

Make the syrup and can

  1. Use the cooking water to make a syrup with an equal amount of sugar; boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Return the quinces to the syrup and cook until very soft.

  3. Fill the cans as you would for canned peaches.

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 and turns tender during long cooking, forming the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the cooking water, forms the syrup that the fruit is preserved in.

The step that matters

Cook the quinces until very soft. Quinces are dense and fibrous, so they stay firm unless cooked long enough for their cell walls to break down. Stopping early leaves the fruit hard and chewy in the cans.

“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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