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Dessert

Quinces Preserved

A sweet preserve made by boiling quince with sugar and optional cochineal for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Quinces Preserved

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Choose very ripe, yellow, and sound quinces.

  2. Pare, quarter, and core them.

  3. Place the quinces in a little water and scald until soft.

  4. Transfer to cold water to cool, then drain.

Cook the fruit in syrup

  1. Clarify and boil an equal weight of sugar.

  2. Add the fruit, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and skim.

  4. Pour the preserves into a pan.

Rest and boil again

  1. After two days, drain off the syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup and add the fruit.

  3. Cover and boil once.

  4. Let it cool slightly.

  5. Simmer for another 15 minutes.

  6. Leave it until the next day.

  7. Repeat the boiling process with the syrup.

Pot and finish

  1. Once cooled, transfer to pots, adding a little quince jelly to each.

  2. If desired, add a little prepared cochineal for a red color, ensuring the jelly is also red.

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

Very ripe quinces
Provide the fruit body and natural pectin that help the preserve set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at this quantity, helps preserve it and firm its texture.
Quince jelly
Adds extra pectin and quince flavor to help the preserves set in the pots.

The step that matters

Scalding the quinces until soft before adding sugar. Quinces are hard and firm when raw. Cooking them until tender in water lets the flesh soften and absorb syrup evenly, so the fruit does not stay tough once sugar is added.

“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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