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Dessert

Quince Preserves

A preserved quince made by boiling with sugar to form a syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Select the finest and largest quinces, reserving smaller ones for jelly.

  2. Pare and core the quinces.

  3. Boil the quinces in pure water over high heat until soft and tender.

  4. Remove the quinces to a large platter, placing them separately.

Make the preserves

  1. For each pound of quince, use an equal weight of sugar, ensuring it is pure.

  2. Make a syrup with the sugar.

  3. Boil the quinces in the syrup until clear.

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 that gives the preserves their texture and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in the syrup, helps preserve it and make it clear and firm.

The step that matters

Boil the quinces in the syrup until clear. Cooking the fruit gently in syrup lets sugar slowly replace the water in its cells. Boiling too hard can break the fruit apart, while stopping too early leaves it opaque and less preserved.

“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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