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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made by cooking quince with water and sugar until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 quinces

  1. Pare and quarter the quinces, removing the cores.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with enough spring water to nearly cover them.

  3. Cover and simmer gently until they are soft and red.

  4. Mash and strain the quinces through a fine sieve.

Make the marmalade

  1. In a pan over low heat, combine the strained quinces with an equal weight of thick clarified sugar.

  2. Boil for one hour, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon to prevent sticking.

  3. Pour into pots and allow to cool before sealing.

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

Quinces
Provide the fruit, pectin and tart flavour that the marmalade is built on.
Thick clarified sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it concentrates, helps the marmalade set and keep.

The step that matters

Boiling with continuous stirring. Sugar-rich fruit pulp scorches easily on the base of the pan, and the mixture must thicken enough to set. Constant stirring spreads the heat and prevents burnt, sticky patches that would spoil the flavour and colour.

“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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