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Quince Cream
Take some ripe quinces, roast them, remove the cores, and cut them into thin slices. Boil the quinces in a pint of cream, with ginger, then strain and flavour with loaf sugar.
A short seventeenth-century-style fruit cream that survived into Victorian reference books. What you end up with is a perfumed pouring cream rather than a set dessert, so read the method with that in mind.
- The hinge: don't hard-boil the cream"Boil the quinces in a pint of cream" means a bare simmer held long enough for the fruit to give up its scent, perhaps 15-20 minutes. Cream held at a rolling boil scorches on the pan bottom and can break; use a heavy pan and stir.
- A pint of creamIf you are reading the Cassell's measure as imperial, that is 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups. Single cream or half-and-half behaves better here than heavy cream, which thickens too much once reduced.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold as a hard cone, chipped and crushed as needed. Ordinary granulated or superfine sugar is the direct replacement; start with 2-3 tablespoons and taste, since quinces vary sharply in acidity.
- GingerPeriod creams of this type often use a bruised piece of dried whole root, added to infuse and removed with the straining, though the original says only "ginger". A thumb of fresh ginger, sliced, or half a teaspoon of ground ginger both work, but ground ginger will cloud the cream and cannot be strained out.
- Roasting the quincesThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F for 45-60 minutes, until a skewer goes through easily, is a reasonable modern equivalent. Raw quince is stony and astringent, and roasting softens the flesh and turns the flavour floral rather than harsh.
- Cores and pipsQuince cores are woody and the seed cavity is full of pectin-rich mucilage. Cut them out generously after roasting, when the fruit is soft enough to handle.
- What straining leaves youThe pulp is held back by the sieve and it is the infused cream that is kept, which is why nothing thickens or sets. Serve it cold in small glasses or as a sauce over baked apples or plain cake; a little of the pulp can be pressed through the sieve if you want more body.
- YieldAbout four small servings. It keeps two days covered in the refrigerator and will want a stir before serving.
Quinces were a staple of English fruit cookery long before they became a curiosity: too hard and too sour to eat raw, they were baked, preserved, or turned into the stiff paste that gave us the word marmalade, from the Portuguese marmelada, quince paste. Creams of this kind, in which fruit or a spice is infused into scalded cream, sweetened and strained, run through English recipe collections from the seventeenth century onward. Ginger was among the more familiar and less costly imported spices in British kitchens. The recipe's brevity is characteristic of a dictionary-style entry, assuming a cook who already knows how long to hold cream below the boil.