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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from quince fruit, sugar, and optional citrus juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Quince Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare and core the quinces, then slice them thin.

  2. Place the sliced quinces in a pot and cover with enough water to cook until tender.

Make the marmalade

  1. Mash the cooked quinces and press through a sieve or colander.

  2. Return the quince puree to the pot, weigh it, and add ¾ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  3. Cook over moderate heat for 30 minutes.

  4. Optionally, add lemon or orange juice for extra flavor.

Jar

  1. Transfer to jars and seal.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Quince + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 fruit and pectin-rich pulp that thickens the marmalade as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the puree and helps it set into a thick, spreadable preserve.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness, and helps balance the sweetness of the fruit.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus aroma, contributing extra flavor to the preserve.

The step that matters

Cooking the puree with sugar. Sugar is added by weight to the puree and must be cooked long enough to thicken it. Undercooking leaves a runny preserve, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and darken the flavor.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quince, sugar, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, sugar, orange. 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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