Name: Quince Pudding
Ingredients: 8 ounces of sugar; 2 light, dried biscuits (3 ounces); 1 quart of milk; 3 eggs; quinces (enough to fill a pudding dish)

Why it works: Biscuit and quince share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Quince Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the quinces

Peel, quarter, and core the quinces, then steam them until tender.
Pour off the juice from the quinces.
Press the quinces through a colander into a bowl with softened butter. If needed, use a little milk to help press the quinces.

Make the pudding

Roll the biscuits with a rolling pin.
Add the rolled biscuits to the quince mixture along with the sugar, beaten eggs, and milk.
Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Bake and serve

Place the pudding dish in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C).
After five minutes, gently stir the pudding with a spoon.
Serve hot with 'Fairy Butter' or cold with sugar and cream.

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.

Biscuit + quincetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,874 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Biscuit + milktop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,332 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + quincetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together104 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Beaten eggs bind the pudding and help it set as it bakes.
Biscuits: Rolled biscuits soak up liquid and add body, giving the pudding a softer, thicker texture.
Milk: Milk adds moisture and softness, loosening the quince mixture into a pourable custard-like batter.
Quinces: Quinces provide the main fruit flavour and, once pressed, the bulk of the pudding's texture.
Sugar: Sugar adds sweetness and balances the natural tartness of the quinces.