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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from quinces, sugar, and water, boiled and set in molds.

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, quarter, and core the quinces, then cut them into small squares.

  2. Measure the quinces and use an equal amount of sugar.

  3. Place the fruit in a porcelain kettle and add just enough water to cover it.

Cook and set

  1. Boil until tender, then carefully skim out the quinces.

  2. Make a syrup by boiling the sugar with the water used for the quinces until it reaches boiling point, skimming well.

  3. Gently drop the quinces into the syrup and boil for fifteen minutes.

  4. Carefully dip the mixture into jelly bowls or molds.

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 main fruit body and natural pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled into syrup, helps preserve and thicken the marmalade.

The step that matters

Making the syrup and boiling the quinces. Boiling the sugar until it reaches boiling point and skimming well removes foam and impurities, giving a clearer syrup. Boiling the quinces for fifteen minutes in it lets the fruit absorb sugar and the mixture thicken as it cools.

“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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