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Preserved Quinces
Quinces may be preserved whole, halved, quartered, or sliced across in rings. Cook the fruit till tender in water acidulated with citric acid, then place in a syrup made with one part of water to three of sugar. When at boiling point let remain one minute if cut; if whole, for five or six minutes, then fill jars and seal at once. This may be varied with apples, as below, or by other fruits as with Quince Marmalade.
A skeletal open-kettle preserve of the sort common in early twentieth-century fruit books, which assumes the cook already knows how long quinces take and how to fill a jar. The gaps are worth filling before you start.
- Sealing method"Fill jars and seal at once" is open-kettle canning, which is no longer considered reliable even for acid fruit in heavy syrup: the seal is unverified and the jar interior is never sterilised. Pack hot into hot jars and process in a boiling-water bath following a current tested guideline for fruit in syrup, or simply refrigerate and eat within a few weeks.
- Quinces are not applesRaw quince is hard, astringent and almost inedible. Expect 30 to 45 minutes of simmering for halves or quarters and up to an hour for whole fruit before a skewer passes through easily. Undercooked quince stays woody no matter how long it later sits in syrup.
- The acidulated waterNo quantity is given. Roughly a quarter teaspoon of citric acid per quart of water is enough to keep the flesh pale; lemon juice, about two tablespoons per quart, does the same job. The acid is there to stop browning during the long cook, not to preserve the fruit.
- The syrup ratioOne part water to three of sugar is a very heavy syrup, and the original does not say whether by weight or volume. By weight it works out near 750 g sugar to 250 ml water, which is more sugar than water will hold at room temperature, so it may crystallise as it cools undisturbed. A one-to-one or two-to-one syrup gives a lighter preserve.
- Preparation of the fruitPeel, and core thoroughly; quince cores are stony and the seeds are hard. Keep peels and cores, tie them in muslin and cook them with the fruit if you want a set, since that is where most of the pectin sits.
- The colour changeLong, slow cooking turns quince from cream to amber to deep rose. If you want the pink, cook gently and give it time; a fast boil sets the fruit pale and keeps it that way.
- YieldThree pounds of prepared quince and the syrup will fill roughly three pint jars. Whole fruit packs badly, so the same weight of fruit will fill more jars than rings or quarters.
- The cross-references"As below" and "as with Quince Marmalade" point to neighbouring entries in the original book. Read as a standalone recipe, this one assumes you will supply the processing detail yourself.
Quince, Cydonia oblonga, was long a favoured preserving fruit in the European kitchen, valued precisely for the qualities that make it awkward to eat raw: high pectin, high acid and flesh firm enough to survive hours in sugar. The word marmalade descends from the Portuguese marmelo, quince, and originally meant the stiff quince paste still sold as marmelada and membrillo; only later did English usage transfer it to citrus. Grouping quince with pears and apples reflects their shared status as pome fruits, a family resemblance visible in the shape and in the way all three behave in syrup. Whatever the reason for its compression, the sealing instruction here is too brief to follow safely today.