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Dessert

Preserved Quinces

A sweet preserve made by boiling quinces with sugar, water, and lemon, then simmering until tender.

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 quinces

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces, weigh them, and use an equal amount of white sugar.

  2. Place the parings and cores in a preserving kettle, cover with water, and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and return the juice to the kettle.

Cook the quinces

  1. Boil the quinces in the juice a little at a time until tender, then lift them out with a drainer and place on a dish.

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

  3. Once all quinces are cooked, add the sugar to the liquid and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the quinces back to the kettle and boil until they change color, about 1 hour and 15 minutes, on low heat.

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

Jar

  1. Cut two fresh lemons into thin slices and 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 fruit that becomes tender and sets into the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it keep by binding water.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright aroma to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the quinces gently with occasional spoon-sliding. Quinces can scorch on the bottom of the kettle and break apart if stirred. Gentle low heat and lifting them with a spoon keeps the pieces whole and the syrup clear.

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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