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Quince Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with stewed quinces, cream, sugar, eggs, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 199 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Quince Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Stew the quinces without peeling them.

  2. Sift the stewed quinces through a coarse sieve.

Make and bake the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the cream, sugar, eggs, and cinnamon.

  2. Add the sifted quinces to the mixture and stir well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 main fruit flavour and body, and thicken the pudding as they are sieved.
Eggs
Set the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard as they cook.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the quinces.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, cinnamon. 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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