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Preserved Quinces
Never make the mistake of cooking quinces in syrup before steaming or boiling them tender in clear water, as sugar hardens the uncooked fruit. Rub off the fur with a coarse towel, then peel, core and quarter, dropping the pieces into cold water to prevent discoloration. Save all the good parings and cores in a separate vessel. Put two layers of the quince quarters in a preserving kettle, cover with cold water and cook over a slow fire until the fruit is tender, then skim out and lay on a flat dish. Repeat this process until all the quinces are cooked, saving the water in which they are boiled to be used with the parings, cores and gnarly fruit for jelly. Make a rich syrup, allowing four quarts of the prepared fruit, measured before cooking, to two quarts of sugar and one quart of water.
Put sugar and water in the preserving kettle, stir until the sugar is dissolved, skim well and boil twenty minutes. Pour half the syrup in a second kettle and put some of the fruit in each vessel, as much as can be accommodated without crowding. Simmer gently about half an hour, or until the fruit turns a rich red. Lift out with a silver spoon and drop piece by piece into widemouthed glass cans that have been thoroughly sterilized. Let the syrup boil a little longer, then pour over the fruit until the juice runs down the sides of the can and seal.
A long, patient method that rewards exact sequencing more than exact timing. Two instructions in the original do real work; the rest is bookkeeping.
- The hinge: water before sugarQuinces are stone-hard and full of tannin, and sugar sets the cell walls before heat can soften them. Boil or steam the quarters in plain water until a skewer slides in easily — often 30 to 45 minutes — and only then move them to syrup. Fruit that goes into syrup raw stays gritty no matter how long you cook it.
- The furQuinces carry a grey down that clings to the skin. Rubbing with a coarse towel, as the recipe directs, is still the fastest way to remove it; a dry dish towel or a stiff vegetable brush does the job in seconds.
- Measuring the fruit"Four quarts of the prepared fruit, measured before cooking" means four quarts by volume of peeled, cored quarters loosely filled into a measure — roughly 4 lb of trimmed fruit, or about 5 to 6 lb of whole quinces. Two quarts of sugar is about 3 1/2 lb.
- Two kettles, no crowdingSplitting the syrup between two pans is not fussiness. Piled fruit steams rather than simmers, breaks up at the edges and never colours evenly. Keep the pieces in a single layer with syrup moving around them.
- The colour changeThe "rich red" is the point of the whole exercise: quince tannins and anthocyanin precursors oxidise slowly under prolonged gentle heat. Half an hour is a minimum, not a maximum — an hour at a bare simmer is common, and rushing at a boil gives amber mush instead.
- The silver spoonIron reacts with quince tannins and can darken or dull the colour, which is why a silver spoon is specified. Stainless steel is inert and fine; enamelled or stainless pans likewise.
- Do not waste the paringsCores and skins hold most of the fruit's pectin. Simmered with the cooking water, strained and boiled with sugar, they give a firm, clear rose-coloured jelly, which is what the recipe means by saving them.
- SealingOpen-kettle sealing, as written here, is no longer accepted practice: the jar cools and draws in whatever is on the rim. Fill sterilised jars to 1/4 inch of the top, fit new two-piece lids and process in a boiling water bath, or simply refrigerate and eat within a month. Preserved quinces are high in both acid and sugar, so spoilage shows as surface mould rather than anything worse.
- YieldExpect roughly six pints of fruit in syrup. Serve as a sweetmeat with cold roast meats or cream cheese, or a spoonful alongside roast pork or game.
Quince (Cydonia oblonga) was a dooryard fruit in America long before it was a specialty one — hard, sour and inedible raw, but so rich in pectin and aroma that no nineteenth-century preserving chapter was complete without it. The Portuguese name for the fruit, marmelo, is the root of "marmalade," which originally meant a stiff quince paste rather than anything made from oranges. The Butterick book, published for the readers of a pattern company's magazines, is aimed squarely at a household that expected to put up its own fruit in autumn, and the instruction to save every paring and gnarly specimen for jelly is the real signature of that economy: one tree yielded preserves, jelly and a scented bowl for the pantry shelf. The slow reddening described here was prized as proof of proper work, and it is genuine chemistry rather than folklore — the same reaction that turns long-cooked quince paste from pale yellow to deep garnet.