Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Quinces

A method of preserving quinces by boiling them, making a sugar syrup, and jarred with fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Quince and apple work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Preserved Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces, then place them in cold water.

  2. Boil the quinces in just enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Boil the parings, seeds, and cores in enough water to cover them.

  4. Remove the quinces with a perforated skimmer and let them cool on dishes.

  5. Strain the juice from the quinces and parings through a fine sieve.

Make the syrup

  1. For every pint of juice, add a pound of sugar and boil, skimming carefully.

  2. Add the quinces to the syrup and boil for an additional 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the fruit.

Jar and seal

  1. Fill jars, pouring the boiling syrup over them.

  2. Seal the jars.

  3. Boil the remaining syrup until it thickens to a jelly.

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 + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Fine yellow quinces
Provide the main fruit, whose pectin and firm flesh set the preserve when cooked.
Sweet apples
Add extra pectin from their parings and cores to help the juice thicken into jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with boiling, helps preserve the fruit and set the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the remaining syrup until it thickens to a jelly. Syrup must reach the gel point, where sugar and pectin set together. Undercooked syrup stays runny, while overcooking can turn it stiff or sugary.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesQuince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes