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Dessert

Quinces for Addition to Apple Tarts

Preserves made by simmering quinces with sugar and water, then adding peels and reducing 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 ↓

Quinces for Addition to Apple Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the quinces into quarters.

  2. Combine the quinces, sugar, and water in a pot.

Cook and jar

  1. Place the mixture in pint jars and cover with plates or saucers.

  2. Simmer gently in boiling water for three hours.

  3. Add the peels to the jars and remove them when done.

  4. Bottle any excess syrup to use for flavoring tarts.

  5. Stew the peels for the first hour without sugar.

  6. Remove the peels, add sugar, and simmer for two more hours.

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
Provide the fruit's pectin and tart, fragrant flavor that gives the preserve its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit and thicken the syrup.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar after stewing the peels. Sugar slows the softening of fruit tissue, so adding it too early can leave the quince firm. Peels are stewed without sugar first so they soften fully before the sugar is added.

“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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