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To Preserve Quinces

A method for preserving quinces by boiling, straining, and sweetening them into 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 ↓

To Preserve Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the quinces, removing all seeds.

Make the juice

  1. Boil the skins and cores in water for one hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a coarse cloth.

Cook the quinces in syrup

  1. Boil the quinces in the strained juice until tender.

  2. Drain the quinces and add an equal weight of sugar to the syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup and skim until clear.

  4. Add the quinces to the syrup and boil slowly for three hours.

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
Firm fruit that softens into tender pieces and turns rosy during long, slow cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, dissolved into the syrup, helps preserve the fruit by drawing out its water.

The step that matters

Skim the syrup until clear. Foam and impurities rise to the surface as the syrup boils. Skimming them off keeps the syrup clear and bright, and stops off flavours from settling into the finished preserve.

“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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