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Dessert

Quinces

A preserved quince dish made by boiling fruit with sugar and water to produce a syrup that sets into jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Slice the apples and quinces without peeling them.

  2. Put the sliced fruit in a preserving pan with loaf sugar and enough cold water to cover.

  3. Boil until the water turns red.

Make the syrup

  1. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

  2. Return the strained liquid to the pan.

  3. For every quart of juice, add 2 lb of coarsely crushed loaf sugar.

  4. Boil until the sugar is dissolved and the liquid is syrupy.

  5. Place the quinces in muslin in the syrup.

  6. Gently boil until the quinces are tender.

  7. Remove the quinces from the syrup and take off the muslin.

Finish and pour

  1. Boil the syrup until it will jelly when cold.

  2. Add more sugar if needed.

  3. Skim the syrup.

  4. Pour the syrup over the quinces, allowing it to cool slightly first.

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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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 firmness and natural pectin, which helps the syrup thicken and set as it cools.
Apples
Add pectin and acidity that support the gel and balance the sweetness.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens and preserves the fruit while thickening the syrup to a jelly-like set.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it will jelly when cold. Sugar concentration and pectin together determine the set. Too little boiling leaves a runny syrup, while overboiling can make it stiff and sugary. A cold test shows when it is ready.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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.

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