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Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from quince and apple pulp sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and apple work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and core the quinces and apples, then slice them.

  2. Place the sliced fruit in a preserving pan with a little water and boil until tender.

  3. Pass the pulp through a sieve.

Make the marmalade

  1. In the preserving pan, combine 4 pounds of pulp with 3 pounds of sugar and let it dissolve.

  2. Boil quickly for about 30 minutes, stirring constantly, until it jellies.

Pot and seal

  1. Pour into pound pots and tie over.

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. Quince + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quinces
Provide the bulk of the pulp and natural pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Apples
Add extra pectin and body, helping the marmalade thicken and jell.
Sugar
Sweetens and, at high concentration, helps the marmalade set and keeps it preserved.

The step that matters

Boil quickly while stirring constantly. Sugar must dissolve fully before a rapid boil, and constant stirring prevents scorching on the base of the pan. The mixture must reach a set point to jell, and boiling too gently can leave it runny.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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