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Dessert

Quince Preserves

A sweet preserve made by boiling quince with water and sugar until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Peel, core, and chop the quinces.

  2. Place the peels and cores in a porcelain-lined kettle with 1 quart of cold water.

  3. Boil until the juice is extracted, then strain.

Cook the preserves

  1. Add 7 pounds of granulated sugar and the chopped quinces to the juice.

  2. Boil until the quinces are perfectly tender.

  3. Pour into tumblers or jars and set aside.

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
Provide the fruit flesh and natural pectin that help the preserves set.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the preserves and helps them thicken and keep as a preserve.
Cold water
Extracts juice from the peels and cores so their pectin can be used.

The step that matters

Boil until the quinces are perfectly tender. Quinces need long cooking to soften their firm flesh. Sugar added before the fruit is tender can toughen it, so the fruit should be fully soft before the mixture is judged done.

“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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