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Dessert

Quinces Preserved Whole

Preserved whole quinces boiled with sugar and water, then jarred with syrup.

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 ↓

Quinces Preserved Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the quinces.

  2. Scoop out the cores from the stem ends.

  3. Weigh the fruit.

  4. Place the fruit in a preserving kettle.

  5. Cover the quinces with boiling water.

  6. Boil gently until tender but not broken.

  7. Tie the cores and peelings in a thin cloth.

  8. Boil the fruit with the cloth.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit to the boiling water.

  2. Remove any scum that rises.

  3. Pour the syrup over the fruit.

  4. Let the fruit stand overnight.

Cook and jar

  1. Put the fruit and syrup back into the preserving kettle.

  2. Boil gently until the fruit looks clear.

  3. Remove the fruit from the syrup when clear.

  4. Place the fruit into glass jars.

  5. Continue boiling the syrup until it jellies when cooled on a saucer.

  6. Pour the jellied syrup over the fruit.

  7. Once the preserves are cold, seal the jars air-tight.

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 that becomes tender and clear in the preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, when boiled to jelly stage, helps the syrup set.

The step that matters

Continue boiling the syrup until it jellies when cooled on a saucer. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set on cooling. Too little boiling leaves runny syrup that will not jell, while overboiling can make it hard and crystallised.

“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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