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Dessert

Quince and Apple Marmalade

A preserve made from quince juice, apples, and sugar, simmered and boiled until thick.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marmalade

  1. In a preserving pan, combine quince juice and quartered apples.

  2. Simmer gently until the apples are soft, about 1 hour.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar until dissolved.

  4. Return the pan to the heat and boil the mixture for 20 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

Jar and store

  1. Pour the hot marmalade into glasses or jars and cover appropriately.

  2. Store in a cool, dry place.

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

Quince juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and the pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Apples
Add extra pectin and body, helping the marmalade thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set and keep well.

The step that matters

Boiling with frequent stirring. Sugar-rich mixtures scorch easily on the base of the pan. Stirring often keeps the heat even and prevents burning. Boiling for the full time drives off water so the marmalade can reach a set.

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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