Skip to main content
Dessert

Conserve of Quinces

A sweet preserve made from boiled quinces and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Conserve of Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Peel the quinces, remove the cores and seeds, and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Boil the pieces until soft.

Make the preserve

  1. Add 6 pounds of sugar to the boiled quinces.

  2. Continue boiling until the mixture reaches a thick consistency.

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 body and pectin that help the preserve thicken and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the preserve as the mixture cooks down.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until thick. Cooking long enough lets water evaporate and concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin so the preserve sets. Stopping early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and sticky.

“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