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Dessert

Quince Iced Pudding

A cake with quince jelly and a frozen cream filling, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and quince share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Iced Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Beat the eggs until very light, then add the sugar and continue beating until foamy.

  2. Mix the flour with cream of tartar and baking soda, then stir the cold water into the egg and sugar mixture.

  3. Grease a double oval mold and pour the cake mixture into it.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 20 minutes.

  5. Let the cake cool in the mold, then turn it out onto a flat dish.

Ice and fill

  1. Beat the egg whites with powdered sugar and vanilla extract.

  2. Ice the cooled cake with this mixture.

  3. Combine the cream, sugar, soft custard, and vanilla extract.

  4. Freeze the mixture like ice cream.

  5. Spread quince jelly on the inside of the cake.

  6. Fill it with the frozen cream.

  7. Top with whipped cream.

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. Vanilla + quincetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Whipped into foam to give the cake its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the whipped egg foam and helps the cake keep its lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas for rising.
Pastry flour
Provides the gluten-forming structure that sets the cake crumb.
Cream
Freezes into a smooth, rich ice cream filling with body and fat.
Quince jelly
Adds tart, fruity flavour and moisture that contrasts with the sweet filling.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until very light, then add the sugar and continue beating until foamy.. The cake's lightness depends on air trapped in the egg foam. Under-beaten eggs give a dense cake, and the foam must be built before the flour and water are folded in to keep the rise.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream, butter, vanilla. 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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