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Dessert

Quince Preserve

A preserve made by boiling quinces with water, sugar, and lemon slices until a clear garnet color is achieved.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Quince Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare, core, quarter, and weigh the quinces.

  2. Combine the peelings and cores with water in a preserving kettle.

  3. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Return the juice to the kettle.

Cook the quinces

  1. Boil the quinces in the juice a few at a time until tender.

  2. Remove the quinces with a drainer and place them on a platter.

  3. If the liquid is low, add warm water as needed.

  4. Add the sugar and boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Skim the mixture.

  6. Add all the quinces and boil until they turn a clear garnet color, about 1 hour and 15 minutes over low heat.

  7. Occasionally slide a silver spoon under the quinces to prevent burning, but do not stir.

  8. A few minutes before finishing, add the sliced lemons.

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 + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quinces
Provide the fruit flesh that softens and turns clear garnet during long gentle cooking.
White sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken and set as the syrup concentrates.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and supports the set and clear color.

The step that matters

Add all the quinces and boil gently without stirring. Quince flesh is firm and can break apart or scorch if stirred or boiled hard. Gentle heat and occasional lifting with a spoon keep the pieces whole and the syrup clear while the fruit turns garnet.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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