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Dessert

Preserved Quinces

A sweet preserve made by boiling quinces with sugar, water, and lemon, then packing them in jars.

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 ↓

Preserved Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Peel the quinces, core the quinces, and quarter the quinces.

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

Make the syrup

  1. Place the peels and cores in a pot and cover the pot with water.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve and return the liquid to the pot.

  4. Boil the quinces in the liquid a few at a time until tender.

  5. Remove the quinces with a slotted spoon and place them on a dish.

  6. If the liquid is low, add more water.

  7. Add the sugar to the liquid and boil for 10 minutes.

Cook and pack

  1. Add the quinces back to the pot.

  2. Boil until they change color, about 1 hour and 15 minutes, without stirring.

  3. Occasionally lift the quinces with a silver spoon to prevent burning.

  4. Slice the lemons thinly.

  5. Place a slice or two in each jar when packing the quinces.

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 fruit that softens and turns color during long simmering in syrup.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and thickens the syrup as it cooks down, helping preserve it.
2 fresh lemons
Add acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet quince flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the quinces without stirring. Stirring can break up the tender fruit, and lifting pieces occasionally helps keep them from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pot during the long simmer.

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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