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Dessert

Quince Jam

A jam made from quince fruit, skins, cores, and sugar, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Quince Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice quinces about ½ inch thick, removing rinds and cores.

  2. Soak the sliced fruit in cold water with a little lemon juice.

  3. Place the fruit in a saucepan, barely covering it with cold water.

  4. Cut the fruit into ½ inch squares.

  5. Cover the saucepan.

  6. Simmer gently until the fruit is tender but not broken.

Extract the juice

  1. In another saucepan, combine the skins, cores, and a few chopped quinces.

  2. Stew gently.

  3. Strain when tender to extract juice.

  4. Measure the juice.

Make the jam

  1. For each pint of juice, add 1 pound of sugar.

  2. Heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Weigh the quince.

  4. Add an equal weight of sugar to the jelly.

  5. Cook all together until it thickens and hangs to the spoon.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar 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 fruit body and natural pectin that lets the jam set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it cooks, helps it thicken and set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and supports pectin setting.

The step that matters

Cook all together until it thickens and hangs to the spoon.. Pectin sets only when sugar and acid are concentrated by boiling down the liquid. Stopping too early leaves a runny jam; cooking too long can make it stiff and dull.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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