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Dessert

Preserves and Canned Fruits

A preserved quince dish made by boiling quince with sugar and water, then straining and reboiling with syrup.

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 ↓

Preserves and Canned Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the quinces into quarters, removing any defective parts.

  2. Weigh the fruit and use ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  3. Place the quince pieces in a preserving kettle and cover with the parings and a little water.

  4. Cover with a large plate and boil until tender.

Make the syrup

  1. Remove the quinces and strain the liquid through a bag.

  2. Boil the juice and sugar together for about 10 minutes, skimming well.

  3. Add the quinces back in and boil gently until they are clear and soft.

Jar and serve

  1. Remove the quinces and spread them on large flat dishes.

  2. Put the quinces in glass jars and boil the syrup a few minutes longer.

  3. Pour the warm syrup over the quinces.

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 and pectin-rich flesh that softens and sets the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, when boiled into syrup, helps preserve the fruit and make it clear.

The step that matters

Boiling the quinces until clear and soft. Quinces need slow, gentle boiling in syrup. Vigorous boiling can break the pieces apart, while too little cooking leaves them firm and opaque. Sugar moves into the fruit gradually during this stage.

“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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