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Dessert

Mother's Quince Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking quinces with sugar and water until the fruit is tender and the syrup thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mother's Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the quinces

  1. Wash, peel, halve, and core the quinces.

  2. Place them in a pot of cold water to prevent browning.

  3. Boil the quinces in the same water until tender, about 30-40 minutes.

  4. Remove the quinces with a slotted spoon and place them on a platter to dry.

  5. Add the peelings and cores back to the water and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  6. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for each pint of liquid.

  2. Boil the syrup and skim off any foam.

  3. Add the quinces back to the syrup and boil gently until they are red and clear.

Jar and seal

  1. Remove the quinces and place them in jars.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil again and pour it hot over the quinces.

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 + sugartop 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, which softens and turns red and clear when simmered in syrup.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup, helping the fruit keep its shape and preserve well.

The step that matters

Boil the quinces gently in the syrup until red and clear. Boiling hard can break the fruit apart and make it mushy. A gentle simmer lets the sugar slowly penetrate the quince, so it turns tender and clear while staying whole.

“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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