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Quince Tart
Put one pound of sugar into a brass pan, pour over it a pint of water, and boil the sugar to a syrup. Slice a pound of quinces into it, and let all boil till it becomes a marmalade, stirring all the time. Next take six ounces of chopped almonds, two ounces of citron, the peel of two lemons cut very thin, or grated, together with the juice of the lemons. Let all boil up; cover a baking-plate with wafer-paper, pour it over, and make it smooth. When the tart is baked, beat up the juice of two lemons with pounded sugar till it is white like ice; cover the tart with it, and let it dry in a cool oven.
This is a fruit-paste tart in the older sense: no pastry at all, just a stiff quince marmalade baked on a sheet of wafer paper and finished with a lemon glaze. Two things decide whether it works — cooking the quince down far enough, and drying the icing rather than baking it.
- Skip the brass panUnlined brass and copper react with the acid in quinces and lemons, giving a metallic taste and leaching copper into the fruit. Use a heavy stainless steel or enamelled pan.
- A pint of waterCassell's is a British book, so the pint is 20 fl oz (about 2 1/2 cups). A pound of sugar is a little over 2 cups.
- Quinces take longer than you expectRaw quince is hard, dry and astringent; peeled and sliced, it needs 45 minutes to well over an hour of steady simmering before it collapses. The mixture is ready when a spoon drawn through the pan leaves a track that holds for a moment — thinner than that and the tart will not slice.
- Citron and almondsThe citron is candied citron peel, chopped fine; candied mixed peel is the usual substitute. The almonds should be blanched and chopped, not ground — they are there for texture against the smooth paste.
- Wafer paperEdible rice or wafer paper, sold for cake decorating. Lay it on a baking sheet, spread the hot paste about half an inch thick, and let it set before it goes near the oven.
- Baking and "a cool oven"The paste is already cooked, so the baking is only to firm and dry the surface; the book gives no temperature, but a low oven of about 300F for 20 to 30 minutes should be enough. The icing then goes on and dries in the "cool oven" the recipe does call for -- 200F or less, or a turned-off oven; too much heat will yellow and crack it.
- The icingLemon juice beaten with sifted icing sugar until white and opaque is a water icing, not a meringue. Add the sugar gradually until it is thick enough to spread without running off the edges.
- YieldAbout two pounds of finished paste — enough for one baking sheet, cut into small squares or diamonds. It is served in thin pieces, like a confection, and keeps well in a tin.
Quinces earn their place in a book like this because they are all pectin and perfume: too hard and sour to eat raw, but they set firmly and keep for months, which made them one of the most useful fruits in a household before commercial jam. The word marmalade itself comes from the Portuguese marmelo, quince, and originally meant a stiff quince paste sliced like this one rather than anything spreadable han usage. A pastry-less tart built on wafer paper, with almonds, citron and the thin-cut or grated peel of fresh lemons, shows the confectioner's hand at work rather than the plain cook's. By the late nineteenth century, when this dictionary was compiled, quinces were already unfamiliar in many British kitchens, which is part of why the fruit reads as strange now.