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Dessert

Quince Preserve

A quince preserve made by boiling quinces with sugar, water, and lemon, then packing with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces.

  2. Weigh the quinces and measure an equal quantity of white sugar.

  3. Put the peels and cores in a preserving kettle. Cover with water. Boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve.

  5. Return the juice to the kettle.

Cook the quinces

  1. Boil the quinces in the juice a little at a time until tender.

  2. Lift them out with a drainer as they are done.

  3. If the liquid seems scarce, add more water.

  4. Add the sugar and boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the quinces.

  6. Let them boil until they change color, about 1 hour and 15 minutes on low heat. Occasionally slip a silver spoon under them to prevent burning without stirring.

Pack and finish

  1. Slice the lemons thinly.

  2. Place a slice or two in each jar when packing the fruit.

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. Sugar + lemontop 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).

Sugar and lemon 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 main fruit, which softens and turns colour as it cooks into the preserve.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps set the preserve by thickening the cooking syrup.
Fresh lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Cook the quinces in small batches over low heat. Boiling too hard or stirring can break the tender fruit apart and scorch the sugar on the pan bottom. Cooking a little at a time and lifting pieces out as they become tender keeps each piece whole and the syrup clear.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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