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Dessert

Preserved Quinces

Preserved quinces are quinces cooked with sugar, water, and lemon, then jarred.

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 ↓

Preserved Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and juice

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces.

  2. Weigh the quinces and use an equal amount of white sugar.

  3. Place the parings and cores in a preserving kettle.

  4. Cover with water and boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. Return the juice to the kettle.

Cook the quinces

  1. Boil the quinces in the juice a little at a time until tender.

  2. Lift the quinces out with a drainer and place them on a dish.

  3. If the liquid is low, add more water.

  4. Add the sugar to the juice and boil for 10 minutes.

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

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

Fill the jars

  1. Cut the lemons into thin slices.

  2. 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
Provide the main fruit, which softens and turns color as it cooks in the syrup.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it while thickening the syrup.
Fresh lemons
Add acidity and a bright flavor to balance the sweet quince.

The step that matters

Cooking the quinces slowly in the syrup. Quinces need long, gentle cooking to become tender and change color. High heat or stirring can break the fruit apart or make the bottom burn, which is why the spoon is slipped under them instead of stirring.

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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