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Dessert

Preserved Pears and Quinces

A preserved fruit mixture of pears, quinces, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Preserved Pears and Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook quinces in a little water until tender.

  2. Add pears and sugar to the pot.

  3. Cook until the juice jellies.

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 + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  3. 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
Their high natural pectin helps the fruit juice thicken and set into a jelly.
Pears
Add sweet, soft fruit bulk and moisture that cooks down into the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it and aids the jelly set.

The step that matters

Cook until the juice jellies.. Jelling depends on pectin, acid and sugar reaching the right concentration as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves a runny preserve, while cooking too long can make it stiff and dark.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, 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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