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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made by cooking peeled quinces with sugar and water until smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Layer the quinces in a stone jug, sprinkling sugar between each layer.

  2. Add 1 quart of water and bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C).

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water together, skimming well.

Finish the marmalade

  1. Once the quinces are soft, add them along with the juice from the jar.

  2. Boil in the syrup, stirring with a spoon until the marmalade is smooth.

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 body and natural pectin that helps the marmalade thicken and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit, preserves it, and thickens the syrup as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Stirring while the marmalade boils. As the syrup boils down, sugar concentrates and can scorch on the bottom of the pan. Stirring keeps the mixture even and helps the pectin in the fruit set into a smooth marmalade.

“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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