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Dessert

Quince Dumplings

A sweet dumpling made with quince, butter, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Quince Dumplings

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Pare and core the quinces.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with a little water.

  3. Cook until they begin to get tender, then remove them.

Assemble and cook

  1. Make a dough with the butter and flour.

  2. Cover the quinces with the dough.

  3. Tie them in cloths and boil until cooked.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + quincetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + quincetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough, making it short and flavorful.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough that wraps and holds the quinces together during boiling.
Quinces
The fruit filling, which softens and becomes sweet-tart as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the quinces until they just begin to get tender. Quinces are hard and take a long time to soften. If they are removed too early they stay firm and may not finish cooking inside the dough. Partly cooking them first lets the fruit finish evenly during the final boil.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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