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Dessert

Quince Cakes

A dessert made by boiling quince juice with sugar, straining, and baking until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Quince and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,444 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Quince Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Prepare the quinces as for jelly.

  2. Boil the juice until it reaches a strong jelly consistency.

  3. Strain the juice through a jelly bag.

Make the cake

  1. Add ½ pound of sifted sugar for every pint of juice while boiling.

  2. Boil again.

  3. Strain.

  4. Pour into small pots, allowing for proper thickness.

  5. Once cooled, turn out.

  6. Finish in a warm 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. 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

Quince juice
Provides the fruit base and the natural pectin that lets the mixture set firm.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps it thicken and set as it boils down.

The step that matters

Boil until a strong jelly consistency. Quince juice must be boiled long enough for its natural pectin and sugar to reach the set point. Undercooked, the cake stays runny; overcooked, it turns stiff and dense.

“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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