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Dessert

Quince Marmalade

A preserve made from quince, water, orange juice, and sugar, simmered until smooth.

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 quinces

  1. Pare, core, and slice the quinces.

  2. Stew the skins, cores, and seeds in a vessel with enough water to cover them until the flavor is extracted.

  3. Strain off the water through a thick cloth.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Put the quinces into a preserve kettle and pour the strained water over them.

  2. Boil while stirring and mashing the fruit until soft.

  3. Add the juice of 2 oranges for every 3 pounds of quinces.

  4. Reduce to a smooth paste, then stir in ¾ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  5. Boil for 10 more minutes, stirring constantly.

  6. Remove from heat and let cool before transferring to small jars with brandied paper on top.

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. Orange + sugartop 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).

Orange and sugar 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 fruit and natural pectin that help the marmalade set into a firm paste.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and keep as a preserve.
Oranges
Add acidity and bright flavor that balance the sweetness of the quince.

The step that matters

Reduce to a smooth paste before adding sugar. Cooking the fruit down until smooth lets water evaporate so the marmalade can thicken. Adding sugar too early can toughen the fruit and slow softening, so the paste should be well reduced first.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar. 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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