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Dessert

Quince Blamange, with Almond Cream

A quince dessert made with almond paste, sugar, and isinglass, strained into a creamy consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Quince Blamange, with Almond Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond cream

  1. Blend the almonds into a smooth paste, adding a few drops of water to prevent oiling.

  2. Pour the boiling quince juice over the almond paste and mix well.

  3. Strain the mixture through a strong cloth, twisting the ends to extract the cream.

Set the blancmange

  1. Return the juice to the heat, add the sugar, and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in the isinglass and simmer for 5 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  3. Stir the blancmange until nearly cold, then mold it for serving.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Blended into a paste that gives the cream its body, richness and nutty flavour.
Quince juice
Forms the liquid base of the dessert and gives it its fruity flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the tartness of the quince.
Isinglass
Sets the cooled liquid into a firm, tender dessert as it gelling agent.

The step that matters

Stir in the isinglass and simmer. Isinglass is a gelatine-like setting agent that must dissolve fully into the hot liquid, so stir it in evenly. Simmering keeps the mixture clear, and skimming removes scum that would cloud the finished set.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, 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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