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Dessert

Quince Blanc-mange, with Almond Cream

A quince-based dessert made by blending blanched almonds into a smooth paste, then mixing with boiling quince juice and straining into a cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Almond and quince 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 Blanc-mange, with Almond Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Blanch and finely grind the almonds to a smooth paste, adding a few drops of water to prevent oiling.

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

  3. Strain the mixture through a strong cloth to extract the 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. Almond + quincetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Their ground fat and proteins form the body and creamy texture of the blanc-mange.
Quince juice
Provides the liquid and flavour base, and its heat helps the almond paste dissolve into a smooth cream.

The step that matters

Grinding the almonds to a smooth paste. Almonds must be ground very fine with a little water, which keeps the oils from separating. If the paste is coarse or oily, the strained cream will be gritty or greasy rather than smooth.

“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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