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Dessert

Quince Snow

A chilled dessert of quince puree folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Quince Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quince

  1. Boil quinces in water until tender.

  2. Peel the quinces and push them through a coarse sieve.

  3. Sweeten the quince puree to taste.

Make the snow

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg whites to a stiff froth using an egg whisk.

  2. Fold the beaten egg whites into the quince mixture.

  3. Spoon the mixture onto a glass dish and refrigerate until ready to serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Quince + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together222 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 fragrant, tart fruit puree that forms the base of the dish.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that lightens the puree and gives the snow its airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart quince puree to taste.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the quince mixture. Folding gently preserves the air trapped in the whipped egg whites. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a dense rather than light, snowy texture.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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