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Dessert

Quince Preserve

A sweet preserve made by cooking quinces with sugar, water, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Quince Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces, then weigh them.

  2. In a preserving kettle, cover the parings and cores with water and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and return the juice to the kettle.

Cook the quinces

  1. Boil the quinces in the juice a little at a time until tender, then lift them out with a drainer.

  2. If the liquid seems scarce, add more water.

  3. Once all quinces are cooked, add the sugar and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the quinces and boil until they change color, about 1 hour and 15 minutes on low heat.

  5. Occasionally slip a silver spoon under the quinces to prevent burning, but do not stir.

Finish and jar

  1. Cut the lemons into thin slices and place a slice or two in each jar when filling.

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 + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Firm fruit that softens, turns tender, and changes color as it cooks slowly in the syrup.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the cooking liquid into a syrup that preserves the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and helps the preserve keep its fresh taste.

The step that matters

Cook the quinces without stirring. Quince pieces are fragile once tender, and stirring breaks them apart into mush. Slipping a spoon under them gently prevents sticking and burning while keeping the pieces whole.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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