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Dessert

Preserved Quinces, for Dessert

Preserved quinces are quince halves and cores cooked with quince juice and sugar, then jarred for dessert.

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 ↓

Preserved Quinces, for Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare the quinces, cut them in half, and scoop out the cores. Place them in cold water to preserve their color.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the parings and cores with three times their weight of quince juice and enough cold water to cover them. Boil until soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve without bruising the pulp.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Weigh the quinces and juice, then add ¾ pound of loaf sugar for every pound.

  2. Add the quinces, juice, and sugar to a saucepan. Simmer gently, skimming often, until the quinces are tender and the juice is clear.

  3. Carefully place the quinces into jars and fill them with the juice.

  4. Once cooled, seal the jars and store them in a dry place.

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 flesh that softens and turns tender during simmering, forming the preserve.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it while thickening the juice.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, skimming often. Gentle simmering keeps the quinces whole and tender, while a rolling boil can break them apart. Skimming removes foam and impurities so the juice stays clear.

“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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