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Dessert

Quince Preserve

A preserve made from quinces, citrus, water, and sugar, steamed, boiled, and simmered, then canned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and orange work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare and core the quinces, then cut them into quarters or eighths.

  2. For each quart of quinces, add 2 sliced oranges or 1 sliced lemon.

  3. Mix the fruit and steam until tender without breaking.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the skins and cores in enough water to cover them for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the liquid.

  3. Add sugar, using 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  4. Make a syrup with the strained liquid.

Cook and seal

  1. Add the fruit to the syrup.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour over low heat.

  3. Put the preserve into cans and seal.

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 + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Their natural pectin helps the preserve set, and their flesh gives body to the finished fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps preserve it by binding water, supporting a thick, spreadable set.
Oranges or lemon
Adds acidity that helps pectin set and brightens the flavour of the quince.

The step that matters

Steam the fruit until tender without breaking it. Quince turns soft quickly. Overcooking breaks the pieces into mush, so they cannot hold their shape later in the simmering syrup.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, 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.

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