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Dessert

Quince Preserves

A sweet preserve made by boiling quinces with sugar until a dark red syrup forms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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

  1. Peel the quinces and place them in cold water.

  2. Cut the quinces into cross sections, removing the core to make rings.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Cover the fruit with cold water and boil until tender.

  2. Add sugar equal to the weight of quinces to the boiling water to make a syrup.

  3. Add the quinces to the syrup and cook slowly for an hour, or until the mixture turns a rich, dark red color.

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 main flavour and pectin that helps the preserve thicken and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit, forms the syrup, and helps preserve the quinces.

The step that matters

Cooking the quinces slowly in the syrup. Cooking slowly gives the fruit time to soak up syrup and soften evenly without breaking down. Too fast a boil can scorch the sugar or leave the fruit unevenly cooked. The slow cook also deepens the colour and lets pectin release so the preserve can set.

“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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