Quince Marmalade
INGREDIENTS. To every lb. of quince pulp allow 3/4 lb. of loaf sugar. AVERAGE COST, 9d. per lb. pot.
Slice the quinces into a preserving-pan, adding sufficient water for them to float: place them on the fire to stew, until reduced to a pulp, keeping them stirred occasionally from the bottom, to prevent their burning; then pass the pulp through a hair sieve, to keep back the skin and seeds. Weigh the pulp, and to each lb. add lump sugar in the above proportion, broken very small. 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, which may be known by dropping a little on a cold plate, when, if it jellies, it is done. Put it into jars whilst hot; let it cool, and cover with pieces of oiled paper cut to the size of the mouths of the jars. The tops of them may be afterwards covered with pieces of bladder, or tissue paper brushed over on both sides with the white of an egg.
TIME.-3 hours to boil the quinces without the sugar; hour to boil the pulp with the sugar.
SEASONABLE in August, September and October.
A straightforward two-stage preserve: stew the fruit to a pulp, sieve it, then boil with sugar to setting point. The only real difficulty is that quinces are far harder and drier than any fruit most cooks handle now.
- The hinge: cook the fruit until it is genuinely softRaw quince is woody and astringent, and undercooked pulp will never come together as a marmalade. Three hours of gentle stewing is not an exaggeration for whole sliced fruit; go by texture, not the clock, and keep enough water in the pan that nothing catches.
- Loaf and lump sugarBoth mean refined white sugar sold in a solid cone or block, which is why the recipe says to break it very small. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute, weight for weight.
- The proportionThree-quarters of a pound of sugar to a pound of pulp is about 340 g to 450 g — a firm but not oversweet preserve. Quinces are high in pectin, so this sets readily; do not increase the water once the sugar is in.
- Preserving-pan and hair sieveThe preserving-pan is a wide, shallow, unlined copper or brass pan; any wide heavy stainless pan works, and width matters more than depth because evaporation is the whole point. A hair sieve is a horsehair mesh — a nylon or stainless sieve, or a food mill, does the same job of holding back skin and pips.
- Setting pointThe cold-plate test given here is still the best one. If you prefer a thermometer, 220F / 105C is the setting temperature. The recipe's own TIME line allows well under an hour for the sugar boil; stir constantly, as the thick pulp scorches easily.
- The colour will changePale yellow pulp turns amber, coral or deep ruby during the sugar boil. This is normal and desirable, and the longer boil deepens it.
- Covering the jarsOiled paper and bladder (dried animal membrane) or egg-glazed tissue were the Victorian answer to an airtight lid. Use hot sterilised jars with proper two-part or lacquered metal lids instead, and store opened jars in the refrigerator.
- Yield and useUse -- This sets much stiffer than a jam — closer to a spreadable paste — and is at its best with hard cheese and cold roast meat as well as on toast.
- SeasonThe header claims "seasonable at any time" and the footer says August to October; trust the footer. Quinces are an autumn fruit and want to be fully ripe and fragrant before cooking.
Quince is the original marmalade fruit: the word comes through French from Portuguese marmelada, a solid quince paste made from marmelo, quince, and imported into England in boxes from the sixteenth century as a sweetmeat to be sliced rather than spread. Only later did "marmalade" attach itself to citrus, which is why Mrs Beeton's book can carry both a quince marmalade and an orange one without apparent contradiction. Quinces earned their place in a Victorian household manual for practical reasons — they are too hard and astringent to eat raw, they keep well in a cool store, and they are so rich in pectin that they set almost unaided, which made them valuable in an era before commercial pectin. The recipe's closing instructions, with their oiled paper and pieces of bladder, are a reminder that a preserve's real enemy in 1861 was not the boiling but the sealing.