Food Ingredient Profile & Pairing Engine
Full ingredient profile includes identity, origin, flavour, cooking behaviour and pairings.
i. purpose
Quince is a food ingredient profile and pairing engine. You name an ingredient, and Quince returns that ingredient's full profile: what the ingredient is, where it comes from, which cuisines use it, what forms it takes, what it tastes like, how it behaves in cooking, and what pairs with it.
The input is the name of an ingredient. "Fennel" is enough. Quince asks which form, variety or preparation you have where the name covers more than one, then builds the profile from that point. What comes back is identity, origin and cuisine, flavour, aroma and intensity, behaviour under heat, forms and varieties, pairings at that form, what tastes similar, and how the ingredient is used in a dish — amounts, what to balance it against, when to add it.
Quince starts from identity because one ingredient name often covers several different ingredients. Fennel is a vegetable, a herb and a spice. Coriander is a leaf and a seed that taste nothing alike. Quince settles which one you have before anything else, and holds the thread across a conversation so follow-up questions keep the dish you are building.
