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Quince Jelly
Wipe and cut quinces in thin slices, and follow directions for Apple Jelly.
A delicious jelly is made by using one half quinces and one half Porter apples.
A cross-reference recipe: the whole method lives under Apple Jelly, and quince is simply substituted or blended in. What matters here is that quince behaves differently from apple in the pan, and that the sealing practice of 1907 has been superseded.
- The method it points toApple jelly is generally made by barely covering the sliced fruit with water, simmering until soft, draining through a jelly bag, then boiling the juice with sugar, commonly three-quarters to one cup of sugar per cup of juice; the book's own Apple Jelly directions are not reproduced here. Quince juice is rich in pectin and acid and sets reliably without added commercial pectin.
- Do not peel or coreThe instruction is only to wipe and slice, and that is deliberate. Skins, cores and seeds carry most of the pectin, and quince seeds in particular are heavily mucilaginous. Removing them costs you the set.
- Slicing quinceRaw quince is dense and slippery, harder than any apple. Halve it flat-side down on a board with a heavy knife rather than trying to cut through a rocking whole fruit.
- Porter applesAn old New England (Massachusetts) variety, yellow-skinned and valued as a cooking apple, now rarely found outside heritage orchards. Any firm, sharp, high-pectin apple works in its place ist, Baldwin or Northern Spy \ightly underripe fruit sets better than fully ripe.
- Leave the bag aloneSqueezing or pressing the jelly bag forces starch and pulp through and gives cloudy jelly. Let it drip, however slow it is.
- Knowing when it is doneBoil the sweetened juice hard and test at 220F at sea level, or roughly 8F above the boiling point of water where you are. The old sheet test — two drops running together off the edge of a spoon — works if you have no thermometer.
- SealingPeriod books finish jelly under a layer of melted paraffin. That practice is no longer recommended; the wax shrinks and admits mould. Use standard canning jars and a short boiling-water process instead.
- YieldThe original gives none. Reckon on roughly a cup of jelly per pound of quince, so about three half-pint jars from three pounds of fruit.
- ColourQuince juice starts pale and deepens to rose or amber as it cooks with sugar; the deeper tones come with longer cooking, so colour and a fresh flavour pull in opposite directions.
Quince earned its place in preserving chapters through chemistry rather than eating quality: raw it is hard, astringent and close to inedible, but it carries more pectin and acid than almost any other temperate fruit, so it sets firmly with nothing but sugar. That reliability made it a favoured jelly fruit long before pectin was isolated and sold in packets oo tratraced to the Portuguese marmelo, meaning quince, and originally described a stiff quince paste rather than anything made from citrus. Porter, named among the region's kitchen apples of the nineteenth century, was valued for exactly the tartness that suits jelly. Lowney's Cook Book, compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company and published in 1907, is best remembered for its chocolate recipes, but like most general household books of its date it carries a full preserving section for readers still putting up the autumn crop.