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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from peeled quinces, juice from inferior quinces, and powdered sugar, boiled until a dry paste.

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 fruit

  1. Quarter the inferior quinces and boil them in enough water to nearly cover them until they begin to break.

  2. Strain the juice from the boiled quinces.

Cook the quinces

  1. Simmer the peeled and cored quinces in the strained juice until perfectly tender.

  2. Press the mixture through a coarse sieve into a clean pan.

  3. Boil the mixture until it forms a dry paste.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add 3/4 lb of powdered sugar for each pound of quinces and the half pint of juice.

  2. Boil the marmalade for 30 minutes, stirring gently without ceasing.

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
Form the body of the marmalade as they cook down into a thick paste.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.
Quince juice
Adds natural pectin and tartness to help the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Stirring during the final boil. Sugar-rich mixtures thicken quickly and can scorch on the bottom of the pan. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the heat even and prevents burnt flavour and sticking.

“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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