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Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from quinces, sugar, orange juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and orange work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pectin liquid

  1. Pare, core, and slice the quinces.

  2. Stew the skins and cores in enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Strain the liquid through a cloth.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Add the quinces and sugar to the strained liquid in a ratio of 3:1 (fruit to sugar).

  2. Boil while stirring and mashing the fruit with a wooden spoon until soft.

  3. Add the juice of 2 oranges for flavor.

  4. When cool, transfer to small jars.

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 + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Quinces
Provide the main fruit body and natural pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and keep as a preserve.
Oranges
Add acidity and citrus aroma that brighten the flavor of the quince.

The step that matters

Boil while stirring and mashing until soft. Quince needs sustained boiling to soften fully and release pectin, and stirring prevents the sugar-rich mixture from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange. 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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