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Drink

Quince Wine

A fermented beverage made from quinces, sugar, lemon, bread, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Quince Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Gather and clean the quinces with a coarse cloth.

  2. Grate the quinces near the core.

  3. Boil the quinces in 1 gallon of spring water for 15 minutes.

Make the must

  1. Strain the quinces by wringing them in a coarse cloth into an earthen pan with 2 pounds of sugar.

  2. Add the peel and juice of 2 lemons, stir until cool.

  3. Toast a small piece of bread until brown and rub yeast on it.

  4. Cover and let it sit for 24 hours.

Age and bottle

  1. Remove the toast and lemon, transfer the liquid to a keg, and let it sit for 3 months before bottling.

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 + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Quince + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 flavour, aroma and pectin that give the wine its body.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides sweetness in the finished wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol, turning the juice into wine.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the wine.

The step that matters

Transfer to the keg and wait 3 months. Fermentation needs time to finish and clear before bottling. Bottling too early can leave residual sugar still fermenting, which may build pressure and break the bottles.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quince, sugar, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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