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Dessert

Quince Paste

A sweet paste made by cooking quince until tender, puréeing, and thickening with sugar into a firm, sliceable confection.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Quince Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quince

  1. Stew the quinces in enough water to cover them by three parts until tender.

  2. Remove the quinces and let them cool.

  3. Press the cooled quinces through a sieve.

  4. Reduce the quince puree over low heat, stirring constantly.

Make the paste

  1. Weigh the fruit and mix it with an equal amount of pounded sugar.

  2. Stir the mixture continuously until it thickens and forms a large ball that pulls away from the pan.

  3. Press the paste into shallow pans.

Cut and store

  1. Cut the cooled paste into small squares.

  2. If needed, dry the squares gently with low heat.

  3. Store them in tin cases with parchment paper between layers.

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 body, pectin and tart aroma that set the paste.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with cooking, thickens the puree into a firm, sliceable paste.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture until it thickens. Quince puree and sugar can scorch on the bottom of the pan over heat. Constant stirring prevents burning and keeps the paste smooth. Cooking until it pulls away from the pan concentrates the sugar and pectin enough for the paste to set firmly when cool.

“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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