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Dessert

Stewed Quinces

A sweet stew of quinces cooked slowly in water and sugar until tender.

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 ↓

Stewed Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the quinces with a cloth.

  2. Peel the quinces.

  3. Quarter the quinces.

  4. Core each quarter.

  5. Cut each quarter into thirds.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, combine 3 cups of water and nearly 2 cups of sugar; bring to a boil.

  2. Add the prepared quinces to the boiling mixture.

  3. Cook slowly for 1.5 hours, or until the quinces are tender and a rich pink color.

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
The fruit that softens into tender pieces and turns a rich pink during slow cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and dissolves into the water to form the syrup the quinces cook in.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until tender and pink. Quinces are firm and fibrous raw, so they need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. Vigorous boiling can break the pieces apart before they are tender, and the pink color develops slowly as the fruit cooks.

“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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