Name: Peeseeved Quinces
Ingredients: 4 quinces, peeled and cored; 1 pint cold water; 4 cups sugar

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 ↓

Peeseeved Quinces

Ingredients

4 quinces, peeled and cored
1 pint cold water
4 cups sugar

Directions

Prepare

Place the peeled and cored quinces in cold water.
Strain the quinces from the water.

Make the preserves

Prepare a syrup by combining 1 pint of water with 4 cups of sugar.
Bring the syrup to a boil, then add the quinces.
Boil the quinces until they are soft.
Continue to boil the syrup down 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.

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 during boiling in the syrup.
Sugar: Sweetens the preserves and, as the syrup thickens, helps set them and preserve the fruit.

“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.