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Quince Liqueur
Wash and dry some ripe quinces, and core, but do not peel them. Grate them on a coarse grater. Spread the fruit on a large dish, sprinkle powdered and sifted sugar lightly over it, and let it lie for twenty-four hours. Turn the whole into a hair sieve which rests upon two sticks placed across a basin; strain the juice until it is quite clear. Measure this, and with each pint of juice put half a pound of refined sugar, and a pint of brandy or whiskey. Let the liqueur stand for a fortnight, shaking it each day. Bottle for use.
A cold-infusion cordial of the ratafia type: no heat, no distilling, just raw quince juice drawn out with sugar and preserved with spirit. The whole thing hinges on getting a clear juice before the brandy goes in.
- Quantities and yieldGrated raw quince gives up juice grudgingly, and several pounds of fruit may be needed for a pint of strained juice. A pint of juice with a pint of spirit and half a pound of sugar will finish at a little over a quart of liqueur.
- The two sugars"Powdered and sifted sugar" for the maceration is best read as caster or superfine sugar, which dissolves readily on the wet fruit. The "refined sugar" stirred into the juice afterwards would have been refined loaf or granulated white sugar; granulated is the modern equivalent.
- Coring but not peelingKeep the skins on: much of the perfume sits just under them. The core and pips are removed, and one practical benefit is that quince pips are rich in mucilage, which can make juice slimy and harder to clarify.
- BrowningGrated quince oxidises to a deep rust within minutes. This is cosmetic rather than a fault, but working quickly and turning the sugar through as you go keeps the finished liqueur amber rather than muddy brown.
- The hair sieveA hair sieve was a fine horsehair mesh; a nylon or stainless fine-mesh strainer lined with muslin does the same job, and the two sticks across a basin are simply an improvised stand. Let it drip on its own and resist pressing the pulp, which is what pushes cloud through.
- "Strain until quite clear"Quince is heavy in pectin, so a first straining will still be hazy. Refrigerate the juice overnight, then pour it off the sediment and pass it through a coffee filter or jelly bag before measuring.
- The spiritUsing a modern 40% ABV brandy or whiskey, roughly half and half with sugared juice, the finished liqueur lands somewhere around 18%, which with the sugar should keep it stable in a sealed bottle in a cool cupboard. Period spirits may well have been stronger.
- Shaking and restingThe daily shake for a fortnight is to dissolve the sugar and pull out the flavour, not a fermentation. Once bottled it improves for several months, and any late haze can be decanted off.
Quince liqueur belongs to the large family of household ratafias — fruit steeped in spirit with sugar — that filled the cordial pages of Victorian and Edwardian domestic manuals, where the point was to put the year's fruit to use rather than to imitate a commercial product. Quince (Cydonia oblonga) suited the method particularly well: too hard and astringent to eat raw, intensely aromatic, and generous with pectin and perfume, it was more often turned into jelly, cheese or, historically, the Portuguese marmelada from which the word marmalade derives. Cold infusion of the sort described here was one domestic route to a liqueur in a period when distilling at home was both illegal and impractical, and it is a preserving technique first and a drink second.