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Preserved Quinces

A preserved quince recipe using sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Preserved Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Peel and core the quinces.

  2. Place the peeled and cored quinces in cold water.

  3. Strain the quinces from the water.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Prepare a syrup by combining 1 pint of water with 1 pound of sugar.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil.

  3. Add the quinces to the boiling syrup.

  4. Boil the quinces until they are soft.

  5. Reduce the syrup as you would for other preserves.

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 and its pectin, which helps the preserve set as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it keep and thicken as the syrup reduces.

The step that matters

Boil the quinces until they are soft. Quinces are firm and need sustained cooking in syrup to soften fully. Stopping early leaves hard, underdone fruit, while overcooking can break the pieces down too far.

“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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