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Dessert

Preserved Quinces

A sweet preserve made by boiling quinces in a sugar syrup until soft and thickened.

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 ↓

Preserved Quinces

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and core the quinces, then place them in cold water.

  2. Strain the quinces and prepare a syrup by combining 1 pint of water with 4 pounds of sugar.

Cook

  1. Bring the syrup to a boil, then add the quinces and boil until soft.

  2. Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens, as you would with other preserves.

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 that softens during boiling and gives the preserve its flavour.
Sugar
Forms the thick syrup that preserves the fruit and gives it sweetness.

The step that matters

Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens. Sugar concentration rises as water evaporates, and the syrup must reach a thick consistency to preserve the fruit. Stopping too early leaves a runny syrup that may spoil sooner.

“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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