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Quince Sweet Pickles

A sweet pickle made by stewing quinces and preserving them in a sugar‑vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Quince Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Scrub quinces with a vegetable brush to remove dirt, then dry and cut out any spots.

  2. Slice quinces into rounds ¼ inch thick, leaving the core and seeds unless imperfect. Weigh the sliced quinces.

Cook and pickle

  1. Steam the fruit in a steamer or colander over boiling water until tender, then place in a stone jar.

  2. In a pot, combine sugar, vinegar, water, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves to make a syrup.

  3. Pour the syrup over the quinces in the jar and seal.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Quince + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Quince + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 when steamed and forms the body of the pickle.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with the vinegar, helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickle.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Steaming the quinces until tender. Quinces are very hard and starchy when raw, so they must be steamed until just tender before pickling. Undercooked fruit stays firm and does not absorb the syrup well, while overcooking makes it mushy and break apart.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, allspice, clove):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Quincethe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, allspice, clove. 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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