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Quince Blanc-Mange
Peel and core two pounds or so of quinces, put them into preserving-pans with one quart of water each, and keep them simmering gently until broken but not reduced to a pulp. Strain the liquor through a jelly-bag into a pan, and put in one ounce and a half of gelatine and twelve ounces of fine sugar. Stir the mixture gently over a brisk fire, and boil it until it leaves the spoon when drawn from the pan. Skim carefully, remove all the scum, then pour into a basin, and stir in with it one-half pint of thick cream until nearly cold, rinse the mould out with cold water, pour in the blanc-mange, and leave it until quite cold and set. It should be made with ripe quinces only. When ready to serve, turn the blanc-mange out of the mould onto a fancy dish.
A quince jelly enriched with cream and set with gelatine. The one thing to fix is the boiling: prolonged hard boiling breaks down gelatine and weakens the set, which is very likely why the original calls for so much of it.
- Handle the gelatine differentlyReduce the sweetened quince liquor to the consistency you want first, then take it off the heat and stir in bloomed gelatine until dissolved. Boiling gelatine over a brisk fire, as written, degrades its setting power; the heavy dose here may be compensating for that.
- How much gelatine that isOne and a half ounces is about six 1/4-oz envelopes of powdered gelatine, or somewhere between about 12 and 20 sheets depending on the grade of leaf gelatine. For a firm but tender unmoulded blanc-mange from this quantity of liquid, 3 to 4 envelopes is nearer modern practice if you are not boiling it.
- The water is ambiguous"Preserving-pans with one quart of water each" implies the fruit divided between more than one pan; total water is not stated. Two pounds of quince simmered in about a quart of water, then strained, is a workable reading.
- Other measuresTwelve ounces of fine sugar is about 1 3/4 cups of caster or granulated sugar. Half a pint of thick cream is 1 cup of heavy cream; "thick" here means high-fat, not whipped.
- StrainingA jelly-bag gives a clear liquor because it is never squeezed. Two layers of damp cheesecloth in a sieve, left to drip undisturbed, does the same. Pressing the pulp clouds the finished mould.
- Ripe quinces only, as statedUnderripe quinces are tannic and set up harshly; ripe ones are fragrant and yellow through the skin. The cores and peels carry much of the pectin and perfume, so simmer them alongside the flesh and strain them out.
- Stir in the cream while coolingAdding cream to a boiling-hot acidic syrup risks curdling. Let the sweetened liquor cool to warm, then stir the cream in gradually and keep stirring as it thickens so the cream does not separate into a layer.
- UnmouldingA mould rinsed in cold water releases better than a dry one; chill at least 6 hours, or overnight for a large mould. Dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a plate rinsed with cold water so the blanc-mange can be slid into position.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 pints of set cream, serving six to eight.
Blanc-mange is simply French for "white food," and the dish began in medieval Europe as a pale pounded-almond and rice pudding, sometimes with capon in the savoury versions. By the nineteenth century the name had narrowed to a moulded cream set with gelatine or isinglass, and English and American cookbooks fill pages with variations flavoured by fruit, chocolate, coffee or arrowroot. Quince was a natural candidate: too astringent to eat raw, it is enormously aromatic when cooked and rich in pectin. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his compendium in 1896, at the height of the moulded-dessert era, when copper and tin moulds in fluted and turreted shapes were standard hotel equipment and the turn-out onto the "fancy dish" was part of the performance.