Name: Quince Marmalade
Ingredients: Quinces; Sugar; 1 teacup of water

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Quinces
Sugar
1 teacup of water

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the quinces

Pare and quarter the quinces.
Layer the fruit in a stone jar, sprinkling sugar between each layer.
Add 1 teacup of water.

Bake and combine

Bake in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C).
Boil equal weight of sugar and water together, skimming well.
When the quinces are soft, combine with the syrup.

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.

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: Form the bulk of the marmalade and set into a firm, spreadable fruit mass as they cook.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it while it cooks down into a thick texture.

“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.