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Quince Preserve
Mrs. Bendelari.
Pare, core, and quarter your fruit, then weigh it and allow an equal quantity of white sugar. Take the peelings and cores and put in a preserving kettle; cover them with water and boil for half an hour; then strain through a hair sieve and put the juice back into the kettle and boil the quinces in it a little at a time until they are tender; lift out as they are done with a drainer and lay on a dish; if the liquid seems scarce add more water. When all are done throw in the sugar and allow it to boil ten minutes before putting in the quinces; let them boil until they change colour, say one hour and a quarter, on a slow fire; while they are boiling occasionally slip a silver spoon under them to see that they do not burn, but on no account stir them. Have two fresh lemons cut in thin slices, and when the fruit is being put in jars lay a slice or two in each.
A classic two-stage quince preserve: a pectin-rich syrup drawn from the trimmings, then a long slow cook that turns the fruit from pale yellow to deep rose. Almost everything here still works as written; a few of the vessels and assumptions need translating.
- Do not stirThis is the hinge of the recipe. Quince quarters soften as they cook and stirring reduces them to pulp, which is why Mrs. Bendelari has you slide a spoon underneath instead to check for scorching. Keep the heat genuinely low and lift the pan off the burner rather than agitating the fruit.
- Weigh the fruit after trimmingEqual quantities means equal by weight, not volume, and the weighing happens after paring and coring. Quinces lose a great deal to peel and core, so 4 lb of whole fruit may yield only 2.5 lb to sugar.
- The peelings are the pectinQuince skins and cores are exceptionally rich in pectin, and the half-hour boil extracts both that and the flavour. Do not skip it and substitute plain water; the syrup will be noticeably thinner.
- Preserving kettlePreserving pans of the period might be brass, copper, tinned metal or enamelled ware; bare copper or brass reacts with fruit acid. Use a wide, heavy stainless or enamelled pan; width matters more than depth for evaporation.
- Hair sieveA fine sieve of woven horsehair. A fine-mesh stainless strainer or a jelly bag does the same job. Let it drip rather than pressing if you want a clear syrup.
- The colour changeLong slow cooking turns quince from cream to amber to garnet as its tannins are transformed by the heat. An hour and a quarter on a slow fire is realistic; pull the pan when the fruit is translucent and the syrup sheets from a spoon.
- Cutting the fruitRaw quince is hard enough to be dangerous under a knife. Use a heavy blade on a stable board, and halve the fruit through the stem end before attempting to core.
- Sealing and keepingThe recipe says only to put the fruit into jars and gives no sealing or storage instruction. Sugar at this proportion is a strong preservative, but for shelf storage follow current water-bath processing guidance for fruit preserves; otherwise refrigerate and use within a couple of months.
Quinces were a fixture of American and British kitchen gardens well into the twentieth century precisely because they are useless raw and superb preserved: too hard and astringent to eat out of hand, but loaded with pectin and aromatics that reward long cooking. Before commercial pectin, cooks relied on fruit like quince and apple to set other preserves, and the trick of boiling the peelings and cores for their juice, as here, is the domestic version of that knowledge. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was published in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children, and is often said to have been compiled from recipes contributed by named local women, though it is well documented as drawing heavily on the earlier Chicago Home Cook Book of 1874; the attribution of this recipe to Mrs. Bendelari sits within that convention of named contributors. The lemon slices tucked into each jar are both flavouring and insurance, adding acid to a fruit whose own acidity varies a good deal with ripeness.