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Quince Marmalade

A preserve made by boiling quince with water and sugar, then sieving and cooling.

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 puree

  1. Cover the quinces with water and boil for 2 hours or more.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool until you can handle them.

  3. Press the quinces through a fine sieve a few at a time.

Make the marmalade

  1. For every pint of quince puree, add 1 pound of sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 to 20 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into shallow wooden boxes or square dishes.

  2. Cut into slices when ready to serve.

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 pulp and pectin that give the marmalade its body and setting ability.
Sugar
Sweetens the puree and helps it thicken and set as it boils down.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 15 to 20 minutes. Sugar and quince pectin need enough heat and time to concentrate and gel. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade soft and runny, while boiling too long can make it dense and sticky.

“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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