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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A quince marmalade made by boiling quinces, sieving pulp, mixing with sugar and cochineal, and cooking until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quince pulp

  1. Boil the quinces in water until soft.

  2. Let the boiled quinces cool.

  3. Rub all the pulp through a sieve to remove skins and seeds.

Add the colour

  1. Pound a little cochineal and sift it through fine muslin.

  2. Mix the sifted cochineal with the quince pulp for color.

  3. Pick out the seeds from the mixture and tie them in a muslin bag.

Cook and pot

  1. Boil the bag with the marmalade until it thickens.

  2. Remove the seeds from the marmalade.

  3. Pour the marmalade into pots.

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 + 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

Quinces
Provide the fruit pulp that forms the body and set of the marmalade.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and set as it cooks.
Cochineal
Adds a red colour to the quince pulp.

The step that matters

Boil the bag with the marmalade until it thickens. Quince pulp sets through pectin and sugar concentration as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull.

“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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