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Quince Marmalade

A marmalade made from boiled quinces, their juice, and powdered 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 quince

  1. Quarter the inferior quinces and boil them in enough water to nearly cover them until they begin to break.

  2. Strain the juice from the boiled quinces.

Make the paste

  1. Simmer the fresh quinces gently until perfectly tender, then press them with the juice through a coarse sieve.

  2. Put the mixture into a clean pan and boil until it forms almost a dry paste.

Finish the marmalade

  1. Add 3/4 lb of powdered sugar for each pound of quinces and the half pint of juice, then boil for 30 minutes, stirring gently without ceasing.

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 pectin and tart flavour that give the marmalade its body and set.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken into a firm, preserved spread.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp to a dry paste. The mixture must be reduced until it is almost dry before sugar is added. Excess water would dilute the pectin and sugar, so the marmalade may fail to set properly and can spoil more easily.

“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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