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Quince Marmalade
Cold water Wipe the quinces with a damp cloth, but do not peel them; cut them in slices and put them into an earthenware pan with enough cold water to float them. Boil them till quite tender and the fruit is reduced to a pulp, then rub through a sieve. Weigh the pulp, and allow three-quarters of a pound of lump sugar to every pound.
Place the whole on the fire and keep it well stirred from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon until reduced to a marmalade. Drop a little on a cold plate; if it jellies, you will know that it is ready. Divide into glass jars while hot; let it stand till cold, then seal.
Raspberries
A straightforward two-stage preserve: cook the fruit down, sieve it, then cook it again with sugar. The stray words "Cold water" and "Raspberries" at the head and foot are printer's catchwords from the surrounding page, not part of the method.
- Leave the cores inThe instruction not to peel matters more than it looks. Quince skin, core and pips carry most of the fruit's pectin, and it is that pectin, not added setting agent, that makes this jelly. Slice the whole fruit, seeds and all, and sieve everything out afterwards.
- Lump sugarLoaf or cube sugar, sold in blocks or ready-cut cubes. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the same refined product and can be substituted weight for weight.
- The ratio, and why it is lowThree-quarters of a pound of sugar to a pound of pulp is less than most jam recipes because quince pulp is thick and highly pectic. Weigh the sieved pulp after sieving, not the raw fruit.
- The panAn earthenware pan over direct heat will crack on most modern hobs. Use a wide stainless or enamelled preserving pan. Avoid bare aluminium, which reacts with the fruit acid.
- TimingQuince is stubborn; sliced fruit usually needs 30 to 45 minutes of simmering before it collapses. The second boil with sugar takes another 30 to 60 minutes and thickens to something closer to a paste than a jam.
- Stir constantly, and stand backOnce thick, the mixture spits violently and scorches on the base within seconds. A long-handled wooden spoon and a deep pan are worth the trouble; a burnt bottom taints the whole batch.
- The cold plate testReliable, but a thermometer is faster: the setting point is 220F (104C) at sea level. Take the pan off the heat while you test, or it will overshoot.
- SealingFilling hot and sealing after the jars cool is not a modern seal. Either process the filled jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, or treat the marmalade as a refrigerator preserve and use it within a month.
- ColourLong cooking turns quince from pale yellow to amber, rose or deep red. This is normal and desirable; the colour deepens the longer it stays on the heat.
- YieldAbout 3 lb of quinces gives roughly three half-pint jars. Because it sets firm, it slices well and is good with sheep's and goat's cheeses.
The word marmalade comes from the Portuguese marmelo, meaning quince, and the original marmalade of medieval and Tudor Europe was exactly this: a stiff quince paste, boiled with sugar and set firm enough to cut. Only later did the English attach the name to bitter oranges, leaving quince versions to be relabelled as cheese or paste. Spain and Portugal kept the older form as membrillo and marmelada, still sold in blocks and eaten with cheese. Quinces were a common garden fruit in Britain when this book was written, hard and inedible raw but full of pectin and perfume, and they turn up in period cookbooks chiefly in the preserve chapter. The recipe merely specifies an earthenware pan.