Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Quince

A method of preserving quinces in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Quince

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Wipe the quinces with a damp cloth, removing any specks and wormy places.

  2. Place the quinces in a pot.

  3. Cover the quinces with water.

  4. Boil the quinces until the skin is tender.

  5. Remove the quinces from the pot.

  6. Let the quinces cool.

  7. Pare the cooled quinces.

  8. Cut the pared quinces into rounds.

  9. Remove the cores from the quince rounds.

  10. Reserve the best-looking pieces for preserving.

  11. Use the odds and ends for marmalade or jelly.

  12. Strain the water used for boiling the quinces through a cloth.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Weigh the quinces.

  2. Use 1 pound of sugar for every pound of quinces.

  3. Make a syrup with 1 pint of the reserved water for every 3 pounds of sugar.

  4. Clarify the syrup.

  5. Add the quince slices to the syrup a few at a time.

  6. Cook the quince slices in the syrup until soft.

  7. Transfer the cooked quinces to jars.

  8. Pour the syrup over the quinces in the jars.

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 that softens and turns tender-sweet when cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in a syrup, helps preserve it by reducing available water.

The step that matters

Cook the quince slices in the syrup until soft. Quince is firm and tough when raw and needs long, gentle cooking in syrup to become tender. Cooking too briefly leaves it hard, while overcooking can break the slices apart.

“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.

You might also like

Quince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes