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Preserve

To Preserve Quinces

This recipe preserves quinces by cooking them in a sugar syrup and sealing them in jars with brandy paper and leather.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and brandy work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Preserve Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the quinces

  1. Pare the quinces very thin and cut them into quarters if desired.

  2. Place the quinces in a saucepan and cover them with hard water.

  3. Lay the parings over the quinces to keep them submerged.

  4. Cover the saucepan tightly and cook over low heat until the quinces are soft and pink.

  5. Let the quinces cool in the syrup.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Make a syrup by boiling and skimming double refined sugar with water.

  2. Add the quinces to the syrup and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let the quinces sit for 2-3 hours.

  4. Boil again until the syrup thickens and the quinces become clear.

  5. Transfer the quinces to deep jars and cover with brandy paper and leather, sealing them tightly.

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 + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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
Form the main body of the preserve, softening and turning pink as they cook.
Double refined sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, when thickened by boiling, helps preserve the fruit.
Hard water
Forms the cooking liquid that softens the quinces and dissolves the sugar for the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the quinces until soft and pink, covered over low heat. Gentle, covered heat softens the dense flesh evenly without breaking the fruit apart. Cooking too hard or uncovered can lose liquid and make the quinces ragged or uneven in colour.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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