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Preserved Quinces
Carefully peel and core the required quantity of quinces, removing both from parings and fruit everything that is not perfectly good. Cut the quinces either into quarters or across into slices, put them in a preserving-pan over the fire in a very little water, and cover them with the parings. Place the cover on the pan to keep the steam in, and allow the fruit to simmer till soft. Take out the slices or quarters of quinces, and strain the liquor in the pan through a jelly-bag. Put the strained juice once more over the fire in a pan, together with one pound of loaf sugar to every pint of juice, and keep stirring this until the sugar has entirely melted and has come to the boil, then let it boil for ten minutes, skimming off the scum as it comes to the surface. Put in the quinces, and let them simmer in the syrup for twenty minutes. When they look clear and are well sweetened, lift them out with a skimmer, first taking the pan from the fire, and put them into glass jars. Allow the syrup to cool a little, and pour it over them warmed. When quite cold, lay a piece of white paper dipped in brandy on top of the preserves in each jar, and cover the jars air-tight.
A straightforward two-stage preserve: cook the fruit, build a syrup from its own pectin-rich liquor, then finish the fruit in that syrup. A few of the period assumptions need translating.
- Do not discard the parings and coresDo not discard the parings -- they hold much of the fruit's pectin and perfume, which is why the recipe lays them over the fruit as a lid while it steams. (The recipe covers the fruit with the parings only; it does not say what becomes of the cores.) Strained out with the liquor, the juice should give a syrup that sets to a light jelly around the quince pieces without any added pectin.
- Loaf sugarCone or loaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a hard block and broken up for use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent, weight for weight: one pound to each pint of strained juice, which is roughly 2 cups sugar to 2 cups juice.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, unlined copper or brass pan. Use a wide nonreactive pot instead dash stainless steel or enamelled cast iron; the width matters more than the metal, since evaporation is what thickens the syrup.
- Jelly-bagA double layer of damp cheesecloth in a sieve does the same job. Let it drip rather than squeezing it, or the syrup will be cloudy.
- Expect a long first cookingRaw quince is stony and "simmer till soft" can mean 30 to 45 minutes depending on ripeness. Use a small, heavy knife for peeling and coring, and drop cut pieces into acidulated water if you are working through a large quantity, as they brown quickly.
- The colour changeQuinces cooked long and slowly shift from pale cream to amber and sometimes to rose or deep ruby, an effect generally attributed to their phenolic compounds under prolonged heat. Colour of that depth takes far longer than the twenty minutes given here, so do not expect it; if you want the fruit darker, hold it at a bare simmer, since a hard boil will break the pieces up.
- SealingThe brandy-dipped paper was the period defence against surface mould, and an "air-tight" cover meant a waxed or tied-down lid, not a vacuum seal. For shelf storage today, pack hot into sterilised jars and process in a boiling-water bath; otherwise treat the jars as refrigerator preserves and use them within a couple of months.
- YieldNo quantity is given because the recipe scales to whatever fruit you have. As a working figure, 3 lb of quinces gives roughly three to four half-pint jars of fruit in syrup.
Quince was for centuries the preserving fruit par excellence, valued less for eating raw dash it is hard, astringent and barely edible uncooked dash than for its enormous pectin content and its scent. The word marmalade comes through Portuguese marmelada, from marmelo, quince, and originally meant a stiff quince paste rather than anything to do with oranges. When Oscar Tschirky, the celebrated ma tre d'h tel of the Waldorf, published his cook book in 1896, quinces were still an autumn fixture in American markets and household preserving was expected work in a well-run kitchen, hotel or domestic; the fruit has since largely vanished from supermarkets, kept alive by orchardists and by cooks who remember what it does to a jar of syrup. The brandied paper laid over the top is an older English preserving habit, generally traced back well into the eighteenth century, and worked simply because alcohol on the surface discouraged mould.