Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Quinces

A baked quince dessert cooked with sugar and water, simmered and baked until tender.

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 ↓

Baked Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the quinces

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare the quinces.

  3. Quarter them, removing the seeds.

  4. Stew the quinces in clear water until a straw can pierce them.

Bake the quinces

  1. Place the quinces in a baking dish.

  2. Add ½ cup of sugar for every 8 quinces.

  3. Pour the cooking liquid over the quinces.

  4. Cover the dish closely.

  5. Bake for 1 hour.

Make the syrup and serve

  1. Remove the quinces.

  2. Place them in a covered dish.

  3. Return the syrup to the saucepan.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Pour the syrup over the quinces.

  6. Let them cool.

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 when stewed and turns tender and fragrant in the oven.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, with boiling, thickens the cooking liquid into a syrup.

The step that matters

Stew the quinces until a straw can pierce them. Quinces are very hard when raw, and they must be fully softened before baking. Stopping early leaves the fruit tough and dense, and it will not become tender in the oven.

“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

Quince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes