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Dessert

Marmalade of Quinces

A preserved fruit spread made from quinces, apricots, and green gage plums with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Marmalade of Quinces

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the quinces

  1. Place quinces in a stone jar with water.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Cover the jar.

  4. Set the jar in a cool oven.

  5. Pour quince juice into a preserving pan.

  6. Boil until the marmalade is complete, breaking lumps of fruit with a ladle.

Prepare the apricots

  1. Divide apricots.

  2. Remove stones from apricots.

  3. Add kernels to the apricots.

Make the jam and store

  1. Simmer apricots and green gage plums with lump sugar until it forms a clear jam.

  2. Ensure the mixture does not boil.

  3. Skim well.

  4. Store the jam in small pots for best preservation.

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. Apricot + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Quince + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Quince + apricottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. 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 pectin and tart flavour that help the marmalade set.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it set into a thick, clear preserve.
Green gage plums
Add body and sweet-tart flavour to the jam.
Apricots
Add fruit body, flavour and natural pectin to the jam.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture from boiling once the jam is simmering. Simmering gently lets the fruit soften and the sugar dissolve and thicken evenly, while vigorous boiling can scorch the sugar, break down fruit flavour and pectin, and make the jam cloudy.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Peachfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apricot, plum. 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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