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 ↓
To Preserve Quinces Whole
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the quinces
Pare the quinces and scoop out the core.
Boil the quinces in water until tender, then drain and weigh them.
For every pound of quinces, use the same weight of loaf sugar.
Make the syrup
Make a syrup by dipping sugar lumps in water (about 4 pints of water per pound of sugar).
Heat the syrup until it boils, then skim it.
Cook and set
Add the quinces to the syrup and boil for about 30 minutes, or until the juice looks like it will set to a thin jelly.
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.
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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 flavour and natural pectin that helps the preserve set into a jelly.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the fruit, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the quinces and set the jelly.
The step that matters
Boiling until the juice is ready to set. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar, and pectin from the fruit then forms a gel as it cools. Stopping too early leaves a runny syrup, while boiling too long can make the preserve dark and stiff.
“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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