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 ↓
Quinces
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the quinces
Pare and quarter the quinces, removing all cores and hard parts.
Boil the fruit in clear water until tender, then spread on towels to dry.
Make the jam
In a pot, combine sugar and water to make a syrup and bring to a boil.
Add the quinces to the boiling syrup and cook very slowly for at least an hour, ensuring they do not break apart.
Transfer the quinces to jars and strain the syrup over them.
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.
-
Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 body and natural pectin that help the jam set and hold its shape.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jam and, with the cooking, helps preserve it and thicken the syrup.
The step that matters
Cooking the quinces slowly in the syrup. Gentle, slow cooking lets the fruit soften and absorb syrup without breaking apart. Vigorous boiling would crumble the pieces and make the texture mushy rather than whole and tender.
“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.
You might also like
Quince Jelly131 recipes
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.