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Dessert

Quince Honey

A preserve made by boiling sugar, water, and quince until syrupy.

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

Quince Honey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a porcelain-lined kettle, combine the sugar and water.

  2. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

  3. Remove from heat.

Add the quince and finish

  1. Pare and grate each quince one at a time, stirring them into the syrup.

  2. Once all quinces are added, boil for 12 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into jelly glasses.

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 flavor and natural pectin that helps the mixture thicken and set.
Granulated sugar
Creates the sweet syrup base and helps the mixture thicken as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil for 12 minutes after adding all the quince. Boiling the grated quince in the sugar syrup for the stated time lets the pectin and sugar concentrate so the mixture thickens and sets rather than staying runny.

“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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