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Dessert

Quince Pudding

A baked dessert made from stewed quinces, sugar, eggs, cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Quince Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Peel and quarter the quinces.

  2. Stew the quinces with a little water and lemon peel until soft.

  3. Rub the cooked quinces through a sieve.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the sieved quinces with sugar until very sweet.

  2. Add the eggs, cream, mace, and nutmeg, and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pastry-lined baking dish and bake.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Quince + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 a thick, pulpy body once stewed and sieved.
Eggs
Set the filling as it bakes, giving the pudding a firm, custard-like structure.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the set and giving a smoother texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pulp and balances the tartness of the quinces.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked quinces through a sieve. Quinces must be fully softened before sieving, otherwise the pulp stays lumpy and grainy, and the filling will have an uneven, gritty texture after baking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, lemon, sugar, egg, cream, nutmeg. 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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