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Quinces, Compote Of
Peel and cut eight quinces into thick slices, put them into a stewpan with just enough water to cover, and four ounces of loaf sugar; stew for about four hours or until soft, when they should be of a rich maroon colour. Then lay the fruit on a dish, reduce the syrup, and when thick and nearly cold, pour over. Allow the fruit to get perfectly cold, then heap thick Devonshire cream on top, and ornament with ratafia biscuits.
A straightforward slow-poached fruit compote, but the long cooking is the whole point rather than an error in the text.
- Four hours is correctQuinces contain tannins and anthocyanin precursors that only turn the fruit from pale cream to deep maroon after prolonged gentle heat. Cut the time short and you get hard, sour, straw-coloured slices. Keep the pan at a bare simmer, covered, and top up with a splash of water if it threatens to go dry.
- CoringThe recipe says peel and slice but not core. Quince cores are woody and full of gritty stone cells; remove them. Keep the peel and cores tied in muslin and stew them with the fruit if you want the syrup to set more firmly, since both are rich in pectin.
- Loaf sugarSugar sold in solid cones or blocks, broken up for use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent. Four ounces is a little over half a cup, which is restrained for eight quinces; taste the syrup partway through and add more if your fruit is very astringent.
- StewpanA wide, heavy saucepan with a lid. Avoid untinned copper, cast iron or aluminium here, as the fruit acid will pick up a metallic taste over four hours. Stainless steel or enamelled cast iron is right.
- Reducing the syrupLift the fruit out first so it does not break up, then boil the liquid down until it coats a spoon. It thickens further as it cools, so stop earlier than seems right.
- Devonshire creamClotted cream, which is now widely sold in jars. Mascarpone or very thick whipped double cream will stand in, though neither has the same cooked, faintly nutty flavour.
- Ratafia biscuitsSmall, hard almond macaroons, traditionally flavoured with bitter almond. Amaretti are the closest thing on a modern shelf.
- YieldEight quinces makes a substantial dish, enough for a large table; the recipe itself gives no yield. The compote will keep a few days covered in the refrigerator, but add the cream only at the table.
Quinces were a standard English orchard fruit long before they became a curiosity; they are generally too hard and astringent to eat raw, which suits them to the kind of long sugar cookery Victorian kitchens took for granted. The word marmalade descends from marmelo, the Portuguese for quince, and the earliest English marmalades were solid quince pastes rather than orange preserves. The dish is dressed up in the manner of the period with clotted cream from the West Country and ratafia biscuits, whose name is generally taken from the almond-flavoured cordial of the same name; ratafias were a common garnish for creams and trifles in the nineteenth century. The maroon colour the recipe promises was, and still is, the mark of a compote cooked long enough.