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Dessert

Baked Quinces

A baked quince dessert with sugar syrup, steamed in the oven.

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 ↓

Baked Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pare and quarter the quinces, then remove the seeds.

  2. Stew the quinces in clear cold water until a straw can pierce them.

Bake

  1. Place the quinces in a baking dish and add ½ cup sugar.

  2. Pour the cooking liquid over the quinces, cover, and steam in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

Syrup and serve

  1. Remove the quinces and keep them warm in a covered bowl.

  2. Return the syrup to the saucepan and boil for twenty minutes.

  3. Pour the syrup over the quinces and cover to cool.

  4. Serve cold.

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
Firm fruit that softens when stewed and becomes tender and aromatic when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved into the liquid, forms the syrup that coats it.

The step that matters

Stewing until a straw can pierce the quinces. Quinces are very firm and fibrous raw. Stewing softens their cell walls so they become tender for baking. Stopping too early leaves them hard, while overcooking makes them mushy and they lose their shape.

“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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