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Quince Preseryes

A sweet preserve made by cooking quince with sugar and water, then jarred with brandy-dipped paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and brandy work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Quince Preseryes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Wash and wipe the quinces, removing blemishes and the blossom end.

  2. Peel, quarter, and core the quinces.

  3. For every pound of skins, cores, and seeds, add 1 pint of water and boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a linen cloth to extract the juice, adding water if necessary.

Cook the preserves

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the quinces and juice with half of the sugar and cook until soft.

  2. Add the remaining sugar, dissolve it, and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand for 2 days.

  4. Reheat the mixture until boiling, then place the quinces on large plates.

  5. Boil the syrup, skim it well, and return the quinces to the kettle until hot.

Jar

  1. Transfer the quinces to glass jars, lining them with double writing paper dipped in brandy.

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 + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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, pectin-rich flesh and the characteristic flavor of the preserve.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at high concentration, helps preserve it and set the syrup.
Juice from quinces
Carries the fruit flavor and pectin into the syrup, helping it gel as it cooks.

The step that matters

Standing for 2 days, then reheating. Resting lets the fruit soak up syrup and the sugar draw out moisture gradually. Reheating to a full boil before returning the fruit helps the syrup thicken without overcooking the quinces into mush.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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