Skip to main content
Drink

Quince Juice

A beverage made by steaming quince fruit, extracting juice, and boiling pulp with sugar.

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 Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces.

  2. Place the quartered quinces in an earthen jar with ½ cup of cold water for each pound of fruit, then cover the jar.

Steam the fruit

  1. Place the jar in a saucepan of water.

  2. Steam the fruit gently until it is broken.

  3. Remove the jar from the water.

  4. Let the jar sit uncovered until the next day.

Strain and cook

  1. Strain the juice through a jelly bag until clear and bright.

  2. Boil the pulp with moist sugar for common use.

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

Very ripe quinces
Main fruit, supplying the flavour and natural pectin that gives the juice body.
Cold water
Provides moisture so the fruit can soften and release its juice during steaming.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the pulp and balances the tart flavour of the quince.

The step that matters

Steam the fruit gently until it is broken. Gentle heat softens the fruit's cell walls so juice releases without forcing out bitter or cloudy material. Too much heat or time can overcook the pulp, making it hard to strain cleanly.

“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

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes