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Quince Paste, for Dessert
Take some ripe quinces, pare, core, and quarter them, and boil them until they are soft in as much water as will barely cover them. Lift them out, drain them, and rub them through a sieve. Stir the pulp over a clear fire until it forms a dry paste. Weigh it, mix with it its weight in powdered and sifted sugar, and stir it unceasingly over a gentle fire until it is firm, and leaves the sides of the saucepan with the spoon. Press it into shallow pans, and when it is cold stamp it out into shapes, and, if necessary, dry these in a cool oven until they are entirely free from moisture. Store in tin boxes between sheets of writing paper. The paste may, if liked, be more strongly flavoured by boiling the fruit in quince juice instead of water. Time, four to five hours.
This is membrillo by another name: quince pulp cooked down with an equal weight of sugar until it sets stiff enough to cut. Nothing about it is difficult, but the stirring is relentless and the mixture spits as it thickens.
- The hinge: cook it far drier than jamThe paste is done when it pulls cleanly away from the pan and a spoon drawn through leaves a channel that does not close. Paste taken off too soon will be slow to firm up in the tray, and the cool oven the recipe allows for is only a finishing step, not a remedy for underboiling.
- Weigh the pulp, not the fruitEqual weights of sieved pulp and sugar is the whole formula, so the sugar is only measured after the pulp has been dried out on the fire.
- "Powdered and sifted sugar"In period usage this generally means loaf sugar crushed and sifted fine at home, not modern icing sugar with its cornflour. Ordinary caster or granulated sugar dissolves perfectly well in hot pulp.
- A cool ovenAbout 200-225F, or the lowest setting a domestic oven will hold, with the door propped slightly ajar. Several hours at that temperature dries the surface without colouring it; anything hotter will caramelise the edges.
- Writing paperPlain writing paper was the period's liner for interleaving sweetmeats. Use baking parchment, both for the shallow pans and for layering the finished shapes in tins.
- Spitting and scorchingOnce the mixture passes the jam stage it behaves like molten sugar and will burn skin badly. A deep heavy pan, a long-handled wooden spoon and a low flame matter more than speed; scraping the corners of the pan constantly is what keeps it from catching.
- Use the peel and coresQuince skins and cores carry much of the pectin and perfume. Simmering them separately in water and straining gives a liquid that can be used for the initial boiling; the recipe's own suggestion of boiling the fruit in quince juice may or may not mean the same thing.
- TimeThe stated four to five hours covers boiling, sieving and the long reduction. The active stirring is usually 45 minutes to an hour and a half depending on how wet the fruit was; drying the cut shapes is extra, and the paste keeps for months once dry.
Quince paste is one of the oldest sweetmeats still in general use, descending from the medieval and early modern *chardequince* and *cotignac* — thick fruit pastes valued because quinces are so rich in pectin that they set almost without help. The dish survives across Europe under local names, as Spanish *carne de membrillo*, Portuguese *marmelada* (from *marmelo*, quince, which is where the English word marmalade comes from), and French *pâte de coing*. Its place in Cassell's under desserts reflects the late-Victorian habit of serving small dried fruit pastes with the dessert course alongside nuts and preserved fruit, in the same role as candied peel or *petits fours*. The instruction to store the shapes in tin boxes between sheets of paper is a reminder that this was preserving work as much as confectionery: quinces come in a short autumn glut, are inedible raw, and a paste kept dry in a tin would still be on the table at Christmas.