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Dessert

Quince Pudding

A baked pudding made from quince pulp, cream, egg yolks, ginger, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Quince Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quince

  1. Scald the quinces until very tender.

  2. Pare the quinces and scrape off all the pulp.

  3. Strew ginger, cinnamon, and enough sugar to make the mixture very sweet over the pulp.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the cream and egg yolks.

  2. Stir in enough quince pulp to achieve a proper thickness.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a dish with pastry and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Bake until set.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Quince + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Quince + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Quinces
Provide the main fruit pulp, which gives the pudding its body and distinctive flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard-like mixture and help it set when baked.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding, as the record specifies a very sweet mixture.

The step that matters

Stir in enough quince pulp to achieve a proper thickness. Egg yolks set when heated, but too much pulp dilutes them and the pudding may fail to firm up in the oven. Adding pulp gradually and judging the thickness before baking helps the custard set evenly.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, cinnamon, sugar, cream, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, cinnamon, sugar, cream, egg. 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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