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To Preserve Whole or Half Quinces

This recipe preserves whole or halved quinces in a boiled golden pippin and sugar syrup.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil.

  2. Add the sliced golden pippins and cover the pot.

  3. Boil quickly until the water turns into a thick jelly.

Cook the quinces

  1. Scald the quinces and add them to the syrup.

  2. For whole quinces, add them all at once; for halved quinces, add them separately.

  3. Boil the syrup rapidly and skim off any foam.

Test the set

  1. To test if the syrup jellies, place 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

Golden pippins
Their natural pectin helps the boiled syrup thicken and set into a jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit while it sets.
Quinces
The main fruit, which becomes tender and flavourful as it cooks in the syrup.

The step that matters

Testing the syrup for a set. Pectin and sugar form a gel only at a sufficient concentration. Removing the pot too early leaves runny syrup, while cooking too long can make it stiff, so the cold-glass test shows when it is ready.

“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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