Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Quinces

Preserved quinces boiled and sweetened with sugar syrup.

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

Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Preserved Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces.

  2. Place them in cold water.

  3. Boil the quinces in just enough water to cover them until tender.

  4. Boil the parings, seeds, and cores in enough water to cover them.

  5. Remove the quinces with a perforated skimmer.

  6. Let them cool on dishes.

  7. Strain the juice from the quinces and parings through a fine sieve.

Make the syrup

  1. Add a pound of sugar to the juice.

  2. Boil, skimming carefully.

  3. Add the quinces to the syrup.

  4. Boil for an additional twenty minutes.

  5. Remove the fruit.

Jar and seal

  1. Fill jars.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over them.

  3. Seal the jars.

  4. Boil the remaining syrup until it thickens to a jelly.

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. Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Quince + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 and the pectin-rich flesh that sets the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it while thickening the syrup.
Sweet apples
Add extra pectin and mild sweetness to help the preserve set.

The step that matters

Boil the remaining syrup until it thickens to a jelly. Quince syrup sets because pectin and sugar concentrate as water evaporates. Stop too early and the syrup stays runny; boil too long and it can turn stiff or caramelise.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, quince, sugar):

  1. Applethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, quince, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesQuince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes