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Dessert

Quince Puff

A dessert of sliced apples and quince cooked with water, then mixed with egg yolks, sugar, and frothed egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Puff

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and slice the apples and quince.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with cold water and cover.

Cook and press

  1. Cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. Press the mixture through a colander and return to the fire.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

  2. Cook for a few moments.

  3. When cool, stir in the frothed egg whites.

  4. Serve cold.

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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

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

  5. Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Tart apples
Provide bulk, natural pectin and tart flavour that give the puree body.
Quince
Adds fragrant aroma and pectin that helps the puree thicken as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the puree and thicken it gently when heated.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they lighten the mixture and give it an airy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg whites when the mixture is cool. Frothed egg whites are a foam that heat collapses. Adding them to a cooled mixture keeps the air trapped, so the puff stays light instead of turning dense and flat.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, egg, 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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