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Candied Quince Slices
Core and slice thin the quinces and weigh, setting aside the same weight of sugar. Scald the slices then boil hard for eight minutes; strain and remove to a kettle containing the sugar and two tablespoons of water and set in the oven to melt slowly, letting gently cook till translucent and a deep red. Carefully remove the pieces and drain, when dry placing on plates with a layer of sugar above and below. Let stand in dry place ten hours or more; sift over them more sugar and pack away.
A straightforward candied fruit: equal weights of quince and sugar, a long slow cook, then several days of drying and sugaring. The whole thing turns on patience at low heat, since the deep red colour only appears after long, gentle cooking.
- Weigh, don't measureThe recipe is a ratio: sugar equal to the weight of the prepared slices. Core and slice first, weigh, then match. The recipe says nothing about peeling; the skin tends to stay tough in candying, so you may prefer to remove it.
- Quinces are hardRaw quince resists a knife more than any apple. Use a heavy chef's knife on a stable board, quarter the fruit first, and cut out the stony core generously. Slices around 1/4 inch candy evenly.
- "Scald" and the eight-minute boilScalding means pouring boiling water over the slices or dropping them briefly into it; the hard eight-minute boil that follows is what softens the flesh enough to take up sugar. Skip it and the slices stay woody no matter how long they sit in syrup.
- The oven step"Set in the oven to melt slowly" means a very low oven. The recipe gives no temperature, so use the lowest setting your oven holds, as a gentle, all-round heat source so the sugar dissolves and the fruit poaches without scorching. A heavy pot on the smallest burner at the barest simmer does the same job with less guesswork.
- Why it turns redQuince flesh is pale and astringent raw; the pink-to-garnet colour comes from long, slow heating, not from any added ingredient. Expect an hour or more, possibly two, before the slices go translucent and deep. If they are still yellow, they are not done.
- "Kettle" means a potHere it is simply a deep, heavy saucepan or Dutch oven, not a tea kettle. It must be oven-safe if you follow the original method.
- The drying and sugaringTen hours is a minimum, not a target. In a humid kitchen the slices may need a day or two between sugar layers before they stop weeping. They are ready to pack when the surface is dry and firm rather than tacky.
- Yield and keepingKeeping -- Packed in a tin between layers of sugar in a dry cupboard they keep for months; refrigeration makes them sticky.
- Don't waste the syrupWhatever syrup is left in the pot is intensely perfumed and worth straining into a jar for spooning over yoghurt, or for glazing a tart.
Quince belongs beside pears for a good reason: Cydonia oblonga sits beside pears and apples in the rose family, and old fruit books routinely filed it with them. Almost inedible raw, quince has been candied, jellied and pasted since the medieval period -- the Portuguese marmelada, made from marmelo, quince, is the ancestor of the English word marmalade, and preserved quince paste is still eaten across Iberia and Latin America as membrillo. Candied slices of this kind belonged to the sweetmeat tradition: fruit put up in its own weight of sugar at the end of the season and kept in tins for winter, when nothing fresh was available. The deep red the recipe promises is often said to be the mark of a well-made quince preserve, a sign the cook did not hurry the pot.