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Dessert

Quince Cakes

A sweet cake made from quince pulp, syrup, and sugar, dried on tin plates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Peel the quinces and remove the cores.

Make the pulp

  1. Boil the quinces in the syrup of quinces and syrup of raspberries until reduced to pulp.

  2. Strain the pulp through a coarse sieve.

  3. Add the loaf sugar to the pulp and boil until it is ready to candy.

Shape and dry

  1. Shape the pulp into cakes and dry them on tin plates in a cool oven.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Quince + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 pulp that gives the cakes their body and flavour.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pulp thicken and set as it boils down toward candying.
Syrup of raspberries
Adds fruit flavour and moisture to the quinces during boiling.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp with sugar until ready to candy. Sugar added to a boiling fruit pulp raises its concentration and boiling point, so the mixture thickens and sets firm enough to shape. Stopping too early leaves it soft, while overcooking can make it stiff and sticky.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, 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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