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To Preserve Whole or Half Quinces

A method for preserving whole or half quinces in a sugar 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: Sugar and quince 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 ↓

To Preserve Whole or Half Quinces

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pippin jelly

  1. Combine boiling water and sliced pippins in a pot.

  2. Boil covered until the water thickens into a jelly.

Preserve the quinces

  1. Scald the quinces.

  2. For every pint of pippin jelly, add 1 pound of sugar and boil, skimming until clear.

  3. Add whole quinces to the syrup and boil quickly.

  4. For halved quinces, boil separately.

  5. Test the syrup for jelling by placing a small amount in a glass before removing from heat.

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. Sugar + quincetop 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 is cooked and preserved, becoming tender and flavorful in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps the syrup thicken and set as it cooks.
Pippins
Release pectin into the boiling water, forming the jelly that the preserve syrup is built on.

The step that matters

Testing the syrup for jelling. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and sets when it reaches the right concentration. Testing a small amount in a cold glass before removing from heat shows whether it will gel, so the cook avoids under- or overcooking.

“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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