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Dessert

Quince and Apple Marmalade

A preserve made from quince juice, apples, and sugar, simmered and boiled until thick.

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

Cook the fruit

  1. In a preserving pan, combine quince juice and apples.

  2. Simmer gently until apples are soft, about 1 hour.

Add sugar and boil

  1. Stir in sugar until dissolved.

  2. Boil the mixture quickly for 20 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

Jar and store

  1. Pour hot marmalade into glasses or jars and cover.

  2. Store in a cool, dry place.

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 + appletop 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

Quince juice
Provides pectin and acidity that help the marmalade set and keep its tart flavour.
Apples
Add more pectin and body, helping the marmalade thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set while preserving it.

The step that matters

Boiling quickly after adding the sugar. Once sugar is dissolved, a fast boil and constant stirring prevent scorching on the base of the pan. The boil also concentrates the mixture so the pectin can gel as it cools, so a weak or uneven boil can leave the marmalade runny or burnt.

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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