Skip to main content
Dessert

Quince Jelly

A quince and apple jelly made by cooking the fruit, straining, and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Quince Jelly

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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Place the parings of quince and apple in a kettle and add enough water to almost cover them.

  2. Cook until tender, then strain through a flannel bag.

  3. Straining a second time improves the jelly but is optional.

Make the jelly

  1. For each cup of juice, add an equal cup of white sugar.

  2. Add half the sugar to the strained juice and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil hard for 20 minutes, then add the remaining sugar.

  4. Once it reaches a boil again, boil briskly for 15 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 parings
Provide natural pectin and tart flavour that help the juice set into a jelly.
White sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, at high concentration with pectin and acid, helps it set firmly.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with the first half of the sugar. Boiling hard concentrates the juice and activates the natural pectin. Sugar must be added in measured portions so the mixture reaches the right sugar and pectin balance to set rather than stay runny or turn cloudy.

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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes