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Quince and Apple Marmalade

A marmalade made by boiling apples in quince juice, sweetened with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince 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 and Apple Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the apples in the quince juice for 45 to 60 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and mix in the powdered sugar until slightly dissolved.

  3. Return the pan to a brisk fire and boil the mixture for an additional 20 minutes, stirring constantly.

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. Apple + quincetop 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

Apples
Their pectin and natural fruit body help the marmalade thicken and hold its texture as it cooks.
Quince juice
Quince is rich in pectin and acid, helping the marmalade set and giving it a bright, tart flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with prolonged boiling, helps it reach a thick, spreadable consistency.

The step that matters

Boiling with stirring after adding the sugar. Once the sugar is added, the mixture can scorch on the bottom of the pan and thicken unevenly. Constant stirring during the final 20 minutes of brisk boiling protects the fruit from burning and lets the pectin and sugar concentrate into a set.

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.

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