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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from quince fruit, sugar, and orange juice, boiled 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 orange work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Wipe the quinces, then peel, core, and quarter them.

  2. Soak the quarters in cold water to prevent browning.

  3. Boil the parings and cores in a little water until the juice is extracted, then strain through a flannel bag or towel.

Make the marmalade

  1. Pour the juice into a porcelain kettle and add the quince quarters.

  2. Boil slowly until the quinces can be easily mashed through a colander.

  3. Add ¾ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit and boil for 15 to 20 minutes longer.

  4. Add the juice of 2 oranges for every 3 pounds of fruit for flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 pectin-rich fruit that thickens and sets the marmalade as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a spreadable texture.
Oranges
Add acidity and citrus aroma to balance the sweetness of the quinces.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the quinces mash easily. Quinces are firm and need gentle, prolonged simmering to soften fully and release their pectin. Rushing this leaves chunks of hard fruit and a weaker set.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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