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Quince Marmalade

A preserve made by cooking quinces with sugar and water or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and wine work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Marmalade

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pare and quarter the quinces. Weigh an equal amount of sugar to the quinces.

  2. Layer the quinces in a stone jar, adding ½ cup of water or wine at the bottom. Sprinkle a little sugar between the layers of quinces.

  3. Cover the jar tightly and place it in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C) or in a kettle of water.

Cook and set

  1. Cook until the quinces are red and tender.

  2. Clarify the sugar and add it to the preserving pan with the quinces.

  3. Boil the mixture, constantly breaking lumps with a ladle until it becomes a fine marmalade.

  4. Store in small pots for easy use.

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 + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 and pectin that set the marmalade as it cooks down.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve and thicken the marmalade as it boils.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while breaking lumps. Sugar and fruit must be boiled long enough to thicken, and constant stirring with a ladle breaks up lumps so the marmalade cooks evenly into a smooth, fine texture rather than scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine. 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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