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Dessert

Quince Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking quince pieces in a sugar syrup with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Quince Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quince

  1. Peel the quinces and cut them into round pieces, saving the peels and cores for jelly.

  2. Place the quince pieces in a porcelain kettle and cover them with cold water.

  3. Boil until soft enough to pierce with a straw, then remove from water.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a separate pot, combine equal weight of sugar and water, and add the egg white.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil, skimming and straining it as soon as it boils.

  3. Add the quince pieces to the syrup and cook until the syrup thickens.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Quince + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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 pectin that help the preserve set and hold its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once concentrated in the syrup, helps it thicken and keep.
Egg white
Its proteins coagulate when heated, helping to collect and clarify impurities that rise as the syrup boils.

The step that matters

Cooking the quince in the syrup until it thickens. Sugar concentration and heat must rise together to reach a thick, set consistency. Stop too early and the preserve stays runny; cook too long and it can scorch or turn overly stiff as water evaporates.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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