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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from quinces, water, and sugar.

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 quinces

  1. Pare the quinces.

  2. Cut the quinces into quarters.

  3. Remove the cores.

  4. Place the fruit in a saucepan. Cover the fruit with parings. Fill the saucepan with spring water. Cover the saucepan.

  5. Stew over low heat until the fruit is soft and pink.

  6. Remove the quinces from the saucepan.

  7. Mash the quinces to a pulp.

Make the marmalade

  1. Measure the weight of the quinces in fine loaf sugar.

  2. Add enough water to dissolve the sugar. Boil the sugar mixture. Skim the boiling mixture.

  3. Add the quinces back to the mixture.

  4. Boil gently for 45 minutes, stirring constantly.

Pot and store

  1. Once cooled, transfer the marmalade to flat pots. Tie the pots down.

  2. Store the marmalade for use.

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 pulp that sets into the marmalade and gives its flavour and pink colour.
Fine loaf sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with boiling, helps it thicken and set.
Water
Dissolves the sugar and helps the fruit soften during stewing.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 45 minutes, stirring constantly. Quince pectin sets only after enough water evaporates and sugar concentrates. Constant stirring prevents the sugar and fruit from scorching on the base of the pan while the mixture thickens.

“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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