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Baked Quinces

A baked quince dish simmered in sugar syrup and served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Core the quince of uniform size and place them in a baking pan.

  2. Put the cores in the pan and fill the spaces with sugar.

  3. Add boiling water to the pan until it reaches the height of the quince.

Bake

  1. Cover the pan with an inverted pan and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  2. Uncover and continue baking until the quince is tender, about 1 hour or more.

Make the syrup and serve

  1. Once tender, dish the quince and set the pan over the fire.

  2. Boil briskly for a few minutes, adding more sugar if needed.

  3. Strain the syrup over the fruit and let it cool.

  4. Serve cold with cream.

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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 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).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Quince
Firm fruit that softens during slow baking and becomes tender and fragrant.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and syrup, and thickens the syrup as it boils down.

The step that matters

Baking until fully tender. Quince is very firm and only turns soft and tender after long, slow cooking. Taking it out early leaves the flesh hard and astringent, so test for tenderness rather than relying on the time alone.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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