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 juice
Pare, core, and quarter the inferior quinces, then boil them in enough water to nearly cover them until they begin to break.
Strain the juice from the boiled quinces.
Make the marmalade
Use 1/2 cup of juice for each pound of fresh quinces, cutting out the hard parts around the cores.
Simmer the fresh quinces until perfectly tender, then press them with the juice through a coarse sieve.
In a clean pan, boil the mixture until it forms a dry paste.
Add 3/4 lb of powdered sugar for each pound of quinces and 1/2 cup of juice, then boil for 30 minutes, stirring gently without ceasing.
For a richer marmalade, use equal weights of fruit and sugar and boil for a shorter time.
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.
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Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Their pectin and firm flesh set the marmalade into a thick, spreadable paste when boiled down.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the marmalade and, with prolonged boiling, thickens it and helps it keep.
- Juice from inferior quinces
- Adds extra pectin and fruit flavour to help the marmalade set.
The step that matters
Boiling the paste with sugar. Sugar must be added to a thick fruit paste and stirred constantly, since the mixture can scorch on the base of the pan and sugar raises the boiling point, so the marmalade thickens without burning.
“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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