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Quince Preserves

A preserve made by cooking peeled quince in a sugar 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 ↓

Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Prepare the quinces by peeling and removing the cores.

Cook the quinces

  1. Boil the quinces in enough clear water until they are tender.

Make the preserves

  1. In a separate pot, make a rich syrup by combining the sugar with water to cover the fruit.

  2. Add the tender quinces to the syrup and cook until the desired consistency is reached.

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

Quince
Provides the fruit flavor and natural pectin that helps the preserves set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and concentrates, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Cooking the quinces in the syrup until the desired consistency is reached. As the syrup simmers, water evaporates and sugar concentration rises, which thickens the syrup and firms the fruit. Stopping too early leaves the preserves runny, while cooking too long can make them stiff or cause the sugar to darken and taste caramelized.

“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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