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Dessert

Quince Preserves

A preserve made by cooking quince slices with water and sugar into a syrup.

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 ↓

Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quince

  1. Pare, quarter, and core the quince, then cut each quarter into three slices.

  2. Place the slices in a pot and cover with hot water.

  3. Boil until tender but not too soft.

  4. Remove the quince from the water and place into cans.

Make the syrup and can

  1. Make a thick syrup using 1 cup of sugar for every cup of the boiling water.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil.

  3. Skim it clear.

  4. Fill the cans with the syrup.

  5. Let the cans stand for at least five minutes before sealing.

  6. You can refill with syrup if needed.

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

Quince
Provides the fruit that softens when boiled and gives the preserve its body and flavor.
Sugar
Makes the syrup thick and sweet, and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the quince until tender but not too soft. Quince is firm and needs cooking to soften. Overcooking breaks the slices down into mush, so they lose their shape in the cans and the preserve turns grainy and loose.

“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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