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Preserve

Fears and Quinces

A quince preserve made by cooking quince with sugar and optional lemon or ginger before canning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fears and Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, halve, and core the quinces, then drop them into cold water until ready.

Cook the quinces

  1. Cook the quinces in water until tender, keeping the pot covered to prevent darkening.

  2. Once tender, pour off the water, leaving it an inch below the fruit's surface.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Add the sugar and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. For pears, add slices of lemon or small pieces of ginger root before canning.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Quince + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 and its pectin, which helps the preserves set as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it boils, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Keep the quinces covered and submerged in cold water. Cut quince flesh oxidizes quickly when exposed to air and turns brown. Keeping it in water and the pot covered limits darkening, so the preserves keep a clear, pale colour.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quince, sugar, ginger):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, sugar, ginger. 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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