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Quince Jelly
Follow the recipe for Apple Jelly, using part apples if desired, and saving the better parts of the fruit for canning.
A cross-reference rather than a full recipe: the method is the standard apple-jelly procedure of the period, applied to quince. What matters is knowing where quince behaves differently from apple.
- The hinge: use the cores, peels and trimmingsThe instruction to save "the better parts of the fruit for canning" shapes the whole method. Quince peels, cores and seeds are rich in pectin, so the jelly is made from what is left after the good flesh has been set aside for canned or baked quince. Nothing is wasted.
- Cutting raw quinceRipe quince is dense and woody and does not yield to a paring knife the way an apple does. Quarter it with a heavy knife on a stable board and do not attempt to core it neatly; rough chunks, skin and seeds all go into the pot.
- Cooking the fruit downQuince needs considerably longer than apple to soften: figure 40 minutes to an hour of gentle simmering in water barely covering the fruit. Underextracted quince gives a thin, pale juice that will not set.
- Why apples are offered as an optionVery ripe or stored quince loses acid and some pectin. Adding tart apples, skins and cores included, helps restore both. No added pectin is needed if the quinces are firm and slightly underripe.
- StrainingDrip the cooked pulp through a jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth without pressing or twisting. Squeezing forces starch and fine pulp through and gives a cloudy jelly, which was considered a fault in a book of this era and still is.
- Sugar and the setA common proportion for apple-type jellies is three-quarters to a full cup of sugar per cup of strained juice. Boil hard in a wide pan and test at 220F on a candy thermometer, or by the sheeting test off a cold spoon. Quince sets quickly once it starts.
- ColourQuince juice runs from straw to deep rose depending on how long it cooks; the pink is associated with the fruit's tannins changing under prolonged heat. A long, slow extraction gives a ruby jelly, a fast one stays golden. Neither is wrong.
- Yield and jarsRoughly 4 lb of quince and trimmings yields about 4 cups of juice. Fill hot sterilized jars, and if you intend to store them on a shelf rather than in the refrigerator, follow current water-bath processing directions for jelly rather than the paraffin seal usual in books of this date.
Quince was a standing fixture in American preserving cupboards well into the twentieth century precisely because of its chemistry: it is high in both pectin and acid, so it gels reliably without help, and it is nearly inedible raw, which makes preserving the natural use for it. The link is old enough to be built into the language, as marmalade comes through the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste, from marmelo, quince. Here quince appears only as a variation on apple, rather than in its own right, the entry running to a single line that points the cook back to the apple-jelly recipe.