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Quince Marmalade

A sweet preserve made by cooking quince pulp with sugar until it thickens.

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 pulp

  1. Slice the quinces and place them in a preserving pan with enough water to float them.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until reduced to a pulp.

  3. Pass the pulp through a fine sieve to remove skin and seeds.

Make the marmalade

  1. Weigh the pulp and add ½ lb of sugar for each lb of pulp, breaking the sugar into small pieces.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens and jellies when tested on a cold plate.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the hot marmalade into jars, let it cool, and cover with oiled paper cut to fit the jar mouths.

  2. Seal the tops with bladder or tissue paper brushed with egg white.

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

Quince pulp
Provides the fruit body and pectin that lets the marmalade set into a firm jelly.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and set as the mixture cooks down.

The step that matters

Cooking until it jellies. Sugar and pectin only set when the mixture reaches the right concentration. Stop too early and it stays runny; cook too long and it can turn stiff or sticky. Testing on a cold plate shows whether it has set.

“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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