Name: Quince and Citron Preserve
Ingredients: 2 ½ cups quince, peeled and chopped; 2 ½ cups citron, peeled and chopped; 5 cups sugar; water

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 and Citron Preserve

Ingredients

2 ½ cups quince, peeled and chopped
2 ½ cups citron, peeled and chopped
5 cups sugar
water

Directions

Cook the fruit

Boil the quince in water until tender, then remove and set aside.
In the same water, boil the citron until tender, then remove and set aside.

Make the syrup

For the syrup, combine 2 ½ cups sugar with the citron and 5 cups sugar with the quince.
Cook the mixture until it turns red.

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.

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

Quince: Contributes natural pectin, which helps the preserve thicken and set as it cooks.
Citron: Adds bulk, firm texture and its own aromatic flavour to the preserve.
Sugar: Sweetens the preserve, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until it turns red. As water evaporates, the sugar concentrates and the fruit's pectin begins to set the syrup. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while cooking too long can make it overly thick and dark.

“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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Quince and Citron Preserve