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Quince Jelly

A sweet preserve made by boiling quince fruit with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Quince Jelly

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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces.

  2. Place the quinces in the water and boil gently until soft but not broken.

  3. Drain the mixture through a cloth to extract the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar and boil for another 20 minutes, skimming thoroughly.

Quicker method

  1. For a quicker method, combine equal weights of sugar and juice and boil for 20-30 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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
Their natural pectin and acidity help the strained juice set into a firm jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firmly while preserving it.

The step that matters

Boil the quinces gently until soft but not broken. Vigorous boiling breaks the fruit apart and pushes pulp and fine particles into the juice, which clouds the strained liquid and the finished jelly.

“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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