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 ↓
Quince
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel and core the quinces.
Cut them into quarters and place them in a stewpan.
Make the syrup
Layer the quinces with sugar, using sugar on top and bottom.
Add enough water to moisten the sugar, but do not overfill.
Shake the pan until it boils, then cook gently, stirring occasionally until tender.
When cooled, the syrup should be almost jelly-like.
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.
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Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 flavour and pectin that gives the syrup its jelly-like set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and draws juice out of the fruit as it cooks.
The step that matters
Cooking gently until tender. Cooking slowly with occasional stirring keeps the sugar from scorching on the base of the pan and lets the quinces soften evenly. Boiling hard can break the fruit apart and cloud the syrup.
“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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