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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from boiled quince fruit and sugar.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the quinces, then boil them in enough water to nearly cover them until they begin to break.

  2. Strain the juice from the quinces.

  3. Combine half a pint of juice for each pound of fresh quinces.

Make the marmalade

  1. Simmer the quinces gently until perfectly tender, then press them with the juice through a coarse sieve.

  2. In a clean pan, boil the mixture until it forms almost a dry paste.

  3. Add ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of quinces and half a pint of juice, and boil for 30 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. For a richer marmalade, use equal weights of fruit and sugar and boil for a shorter time.

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, pectin and tart flavour that give the marmalade its set and character.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with boiling, thickens the pulp into a firm, spreadable paste.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp to a dry paste. Boiling the quince pulp drives off water so the mixture concentrates and sets. Stop too early and the marmalade stays runny; cook too long and it scorches or becomes stiff. Stirring constantly prevents sticking and burning on the base of the pan.

“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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