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QUINCE JELLY (another way) (Take one quart of quince juice)
Take one quart of quince juice, and add to it one pound of loaf sugar; boil until it will jelly. Boil it again with a pint of white wine in which an ounce of gum arabic has been dissolved, and pour it into pots or glasses. When cold it will set to a solid jelly.
A two-stage jelly: set first with sugar, then re-boiled with wine and gum arabic for a firmer, more confection-like body. A few of the assumptions behind it need spelling out.
- Getting the juiceThe book assumes you already have quince juice: chopped unpeeled quinces, cores and all, barely covered with water, simmered until soft, then drained through a jelly bag without pressing. Cores and skins hold most of the pectin, so do not trim them away. Roughly 3 lb of fruit gives a quart of juice.
- Loaf sugarRefined cane sugar, sold in a hard cone and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement; one pound is about 2¼ cups.
- The sugar ratio is lowOne pound of sugar to a quart of juice falls short of the pound-of-sugar-per-pint-of-juice ratio common in later preserving practice. Quince is rich enough in pectin and acid to set at this ratio, and the second boil concentrates it further, but this is not a high-sugar preserve and is best kept refrigerated rather than in the pantry.
- "Boil until it will jelly"The setting point is 220F (104C) at sea level, or the moment two drops run together and sheet off a cold spoon. This is the hinge of the recipe; both boils depend on judging it, and a thermometer removes the guesswork.
- Gum arabicStill sold, usually as acacia gum powder, in baking and confectionery suppliers. Whole lumps take hours to hydrate, so use the powder, dissolve it in the wine cold and off the heat, and strain out any grit before it joins the pan. An ounce is roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons of powder, depending on how finely it is ground.
- The second boilAdding a pint of wine to a jelly that has already set means boiling the whole thing back down to setting point a second time. Expect a long reduction and watch for scorching once the mass thickens; most of the alcohol boils away, and the gum firms the body a little rather than leaving a soft wobble.
- Pots and glassesUse clean heatproof jars warmed in a 250F oven so they do not crack, and fill while the jelly is still pourable. This is not a properly processed preserve, so seal, cool, and keep it chilled; use within a few weeks.
- YieldAbout 1½ pints of finished jelly, depending on how far the second boil is taken.
Quince was the great jelly fruit of the European kitchen long before anyone had isolated pectin: hard, astringent and nearly inedible raw, but so high in pectin and acid that it sets almost unaided. The word marmalade comes from the Portuguese marmelo, quince, and originally meant a stiff quince paste that could be sliced, not a citrus spread. The gum arabic here, a dried sap from acacia trees traded out of Sudan and long a staple of the confectioner's shop for lozenges and pastilles, is working in the same direction: firming a soft jelly, though how far it can go at this dilution is another matter.