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Quince Paste
Put the required number of quinces in water till they are soft, then pound and pass them through a sieve. Weight the pulp, and put into a preserving-pan an equal weight of crushed loaf sugar, boil it to the feather degree, add the mashed quinces, and stir them over the fire until boiling gently. Pour the paste into shallow tin-dishes, and leave it until set. Cut the paste into leaves, rings, etc., place them on a wire tray, and dry in a screen. Pack in boxes between layers of paper. If liked, the paste may be colored by adding a little liquid carmine to the pulp before it is mixed with the sugar.
This is membrillo by another name, and the whole thing hinges on cooking the sugar-and-pulp mixture far enough that it sets firm enough to slice. The original assumes a sugar thermometer's worth of experience and a drying cupboard; both can be replaced.
- The feather degreeOld sugar-boiling stages are inconsistent from book to book, but "feather" falls in the neighborhood of 240F, just at or above soft-ball. Boil the syrup to about that point before the pulp goes in; a candy thermometer removes the guesswork the original expects you to supply.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in hard cones and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar, weighed, is the direct substitute.
- Equal weight is the whole formulaThere are no quantities here because the recipe is a ratio: weigh the sieved pulp, match it with the same weight of sugar. Quinces vary enormously in size, so weighing after cooking is the only reliable approach.
- Cooking the paste"Stir them over the fire until boiling gently" understates the work if you want a paste firm enough to slice. Expect a stretch of steady stirring over low heat until the mixture darkens and a spoon drawn through leaves a channel that holds; how long that takes depends on how wet the pulp is. Underdone paste will never set, and it spits as it thickens, so a long-handled spoon and a deep pan are worth having.
- Preparing the fruitSimmer whole or quartered quinces 30 to 45 minutes until a knife goes through easily. The peels and cores hold much of the pectin and can go in with the fruit, since everything passes through the sieve afterward. A food mill or ricer does the work faster than pounding.
- Shallow tin-dishesAny shallow pan lined with parchment or lightly oiled works. A depth of half to three-quarters of an inch is right for cutting into shapes; anything deeper will not dry through.
- Drying in a screenA screen was a frame or enclosure set in a warm, airy place near the range so air could pass over the trays. An oven at its lowest setting with the door propped, or a dehydrator around 130 to 150F, does the same job in several hours to overnight. The surface should be dry and slightly tacky, not sticky.
- The carmineLiquid carmine is cochineal, still sold as a food coloring. It is optional and cosmetic; well-cooked quince paste turns a good ruby color on its own.
- Yield and servingServing -- serve it with manchego or a firm sheep's cheese, or as the confection the recipe intends, cut into shapes and layered between parchment in a tin.
Quince paste is one of the oldest sugar confections in continuous European use: the fruit is hard, sour and nearly inedible raw, but it is loaded with pectin, so cooking it with sugar produces a paste that sets without any added gelling agent and keeps for months. The Portuguese word for quince, marmelo, gave English marmalade, which originally meant exactly this stiff sliceable quince block rather than anything spreadable. Spain still makes it as membrillo, France as cotignac. Its appearance in grand-hotel kitchen literature of the period is often taken to reflect the work of the confectioner's department, where petits fours, pastes and dried fruit sweets were cut into decorative shapes for after-dinner service, and where the sugar-boiling vocabulary of thread, pearl, blow and feather may still have been working shorthand rather than antiquarian trivia.