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Dessert

Quince Pudding

A baked pudding made with quinces, sugar, milk, eggs, and biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

  1. Peel, quarter, and core the quinces, then steam them until tender.

  2. Pour off the juice and press the quinces through a colander into a bowl with softened butter.

  3. If needed, use a little milk to help press the quinces.

Make the pudding

  1. Roll the biscuits with a rolling pin and add them to the quince mixture along with sugar, beaten eggs, and milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Bake and serve

  1. After 5 minutes, stir gently with a spoon.

  2. 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.

  1. Biscuit + quincetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Biscuit + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. 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

Quinces
Provide the main fruit flavor, aroma, and body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Biscuits
Absorb liquid and give the pudding structure and body.
Milk
Adds moisture and makes the pudding soft and creamy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the quinces.

The step that matters

Steam the quinces until fully tender before pressing. Quinces that are still firm will not press through the colander into a smooth purée, and lumps of fibrous fruit will remain in the pudding.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, biscuit, milk, egg. 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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