Stewed Quinces
Wash the quinces, pare and core them and cut them into eighths. Cover with cold water and let them come slowly to a boil, removing the scum that rises. When nearly soft add one cup of sugar for every pint of fruit and one cup of apples, pared and cut into eighths. Boil until both apples and quinces are tender.
A plain stewed fruit that depends on one thing the original does not spell out: quince is not apple, and it needs long, slow cooking before sugar goes anywhere near it.
- Add sugar only when the fruit givesSugar added to hard quince slows the softening of the flesh, and pieces sweetened too early may stay firm however long you cook them. Simmer in water until a knife slides in with little resistance -- often 40 minutes or more, depending on ripeness -- then sweeten.
- "One pint of fruit"This is a volume measure of the prepared eighths; a pint is 2 cups, perhaps 10 to 12 oz of cut quince, or roughly two medium fruits. So about one cup of sugar per two cups of fruit -- sweet, but quince is very tart and very astringent.
- ParingRaw quince is dense and slippery. Use a sturdy paring knife rather than a peeler, and expect the cores to be woody. Drop the cut pieces into the cold water as you go or the flesh browns quickly.
- Keep the coresQuince seeds and cores are loaded with pectin. Tie them in a square of cheesecloth and simmer them with the fruit, then lift them out before serving; the syrup will body up noticeably.
- The apples are not fillerA cup of pared apple adds pectin and mild sweetness and breaks down into the syrup, giving the dish a light sauce around the intact quince pieces. A firm cooking apple works better than a mealy one.
- ColourLong cooking can carry quince from cream to amber and eventually to rose or deep pink, a change in its phenolic compounds rather than simple oxidation. The colour tends to deepen as the fruit softens, but in a short stew like this it is not a reliable test of doneness; go by the knife.
- SkimmingSkim the foam that rises as the water heats; it is mostly loosened surface matter and trapped air, and it forms chiefly during the slow heating the recipe calls for. Bring the pot slowly to a boil uncovered and skim, then keep the boil gentle -- a hard boil breaks the pieces apart.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives only a ratio: one cup of sugar and one cup of apple to each pint of fruit. A couple of pints of prepared quince, with apple in proportion, serves four to six as a dessert or spooned over cake or rice pudding. Refrigerated in its syrup it should keep several days; this is a stewed fruit, not a canned preserve.
Quince (Cydonia oblonga) is one of the oldest cultivated fruits of western Asia and the Mediterranean, and it reached American gardens early — a quince bush at the edge of the kitchen plot was ordinary well into the twentieth century. It is almost never eaten raw, being hard, sour and astringent, so nearly every historical treatment involves prolonged cooking with sugar: stewed, baked, jellied, or boiled down into the stiff paste the Portuguese call marmelada, from marmelo, quince — the word that gave English "marmalade" long before oranges took it over. Its natural pectin made it the household jelly-setter of choice, and the pairing with apple here is the same logic working in reverse: the apple softens and sweetens the quince while both fruits thicken their own syrup.