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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from quince pulp and sugar, cooked until thickened.

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 cover them.

  2. Stew the quinces over low heat, stirring occasionally, until they reduce to a pulp.

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

Make the marmalade

  1. Weigh the pulp and add 5 lb of sugar for every lb of pulp, breaking the sugar into small pieces.

  2. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens into a marmalade.

  3. To test, drop a little on a cold plate; if it jellies, it's done.

Jar and cover

  1. Pour the hot marmalade into jars.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Cover with oiled paper cut to size.

  4. Optionally, cover 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 natural pectin that helps the marmalade thicken and set.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, cooked down with the fruit, helps it gel and keep well.

The step that matters

Testing for the set. Sugar and fruit pectin form a gel only at the right concentration. Stop cooking too early and the marmalade stays runny; cook too long and it turns stiff, so the cold-plate test matters.

“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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