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Quince Custard
Pare the quinces, and simmer them gently till they are tender in as much water as will barely cover them. Pour off the juice, and strain it through a jelly-bag. Boil a pint of it with five ounces of loaf sugar, and mix it very gradually whilst hot with the yolks of ten well-beaten eggs. Pour the custard into a heated jug, put this into a saucepan of hot water, and stir over the fire until the custard begins to thicken. Pour it into glasses, and it is ready for serving. Sufficient for a pint and a half of custard.
A quince-juice custard thickened with yolks alone, cooked in a jug standing in hot water — an improvised double boiler. The whole dish turns on heat control.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerYolk custard sets between about 170F and 180F and scrambles above that. The water in the outer pan should shiver, not boil, and the custard should be stirred constantly until it coats the back of a spoon.
- Acid and eggsQuince juice is markedly acidic, which makes the yolks prone to curdling on contact. The instruction to mix the hot syrup in "very gradually" is tempering — pour it into the beaten yolks in a thin stream while whisking, never the reverse.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone; ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent. Five ounces is about three-quarters of a cup.
- Preparing the quincesRaw quince is hard and astringent and needs a heavy knife and patience. A couple of pounds of fruit, barely covered with water, should give something like the pint of strained juice called for; simmering takes 30-45 minutes, and the flesh left behind is worth keeping for a paste or a compote.
- The jelly-bagA jelly-bag gives clear juice because the pulp is never pressed. A double layer of damp muslin or a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth does the same; let it drip rather than squeezing, or the custard will be cloudy.
- The heated jugA warmed jug set in a pan of hot water is simply a bain-marie. A stainless bowl over barely simmering water, or a heavy saucepan over the lowest heat with unbroken stirring, works as well.
- Richness and yieldTen yolks to a pint of liquid is very rich by current standards; the result is closer to a pouring custard set in glasses than to a baked cream. The stated pint and a half is about 30 fl oz, enough for six glasses of roughly 5 fl oz.
- ServingThe book stops at 'ready for serving' and gives no serving temperature. If you want it cold, chill for two or three hours, and cover the surface with cling film if you object to a skin.
Quince (Cydonia oblonga) was a standard fixture of British and Irish gardens well into the nineteenth century, valued because its high pectin and strong perfume made it useful where other fruit was not — it is rarely eaten raw, but it sets jellies, scents apple pies and gives a distinct floral acidity to syrups. The word marmalade is generally traced to the Portuguese marmelo, quince, the fruit from which the original preserve was made. Quinces became much less common in British cooking during the twentieth century, and have become more visible again through Spanish and Middle Eastern cooking.