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Dessert

Quince Iced Pudding

A sponge cake iced with egg white, filled with frozen cream and spread with quince jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and quince share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Quince Iced Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Beat the eggs until very light, then add the sugar and continue beating until foamy.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. Stir the cold water into the egg and sugar mixture, then sift the flour mixture into the same bowl.

  4. Grease a double oval mold (4 inches high, 6 by 8 inches at the top) and pour the cake mixture into it.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 20 minutes.

  6. Let the cake cool in the mold, then turn it out onto a flat dish.

Make the icing and filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg whites with the powdered sugar and vanilla extract until smooth.

  2. Ice the cooled cake with the egg white mixture and set aside.

  3. In another bowl, combine the cream, sugar, soft custard, and vanilla extract, then freeze like ice cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread quince jelly on the inside of the cake, fill the center with the frozen cream, and top with whipped 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. Vanilla + quincetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Whipped into foam to give the cake its light, airy structure.
Pastry flour
Provides the starch and gluten framework that sets the cake's crumb.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg foam and adds slight acidity to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas and help the cake rise.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen filling a smooth, creamy texture.
Quince jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and moisture to the inside of the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour mixture. Sifting the flour mixture into the foam and mixing gently keeps air bubbles intact. Overmixing develops gluten and deflates the batter, producing a dense cake.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream, butter, vanilla. 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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