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Preserved Quinces (Pare quarter and core) (II)
Pare, quarter and core the quinces and throw into cold water as prepared. Put the cores and parings into a preserving kettle with two quarts of water to each quart of parings; cook slowly for half an hour and strain. Return the strained liquid to the kettle and drop in as many pieces of the fruit as possible without crowding. Simmer gently until tender enough to pierce with a straw. Remove and add more fruit, until all is cooked. When all are done measure the liquid that remains; for ten pounds of the fruit there should be two quarts of liquid; if less, add hot water to make up the amount. Add nine pounds of granulated sugar and cook slowly to a syrup, skimming often. Then drop in the pieces of quinces, a few at a time, and simmer unti ltransparent. Drop them in the jars and seal.
A long-form open-kettle preserve built in two stages: a pectin-rich stock drawn from the peelings and cores, then the fruit poached in that stock before it ever meets sugar. The order is the whole point.
- Cook the fruit before it meets the sugarQuince flesh is stony and will never soften once it is in heavy syrup. Simmering the pieces in the plain parings liquid first, until a straw or thin skewer slides in without resistance, is the hinge of the recipe. Rushing this step gives you gravel suspended in jelly.
- The parings liquid is homemade pectinQuince skin and core carry most of the fruit's pectin and much of its perfume. Two quarts of water to each quart of parings, half an hour at a bare simmer, then strained through a sieve or jelly bag is what gives the finished syrup body. Do not press the pulp hard or the syrup will cloud.
- Cold water as you workCut quince browns within minutes. The cold-water bath is not fussiness; a little lemon juice in that water helps further and does not affect the flavour of a preserve this sweet.
- Proportions and yieldProportions -- Ten pounds of prepared fruit, two quarts (8 cups) of strained liquid and nine pounds of sugar is roughly a nine-to-ten sugar-to-fruit ratio, high even by preserving standards. No yield is stated, and it will depend on how far the syrup is reduced. The quantity halves and quarters cleanly.
- "Cook slowly to a syrup"No time or temperature is given because it depends on your pan. Modern practice for a setting syrup works to around 220F at sea level, though the recipe names no such figure; otherwise go by a spoonful sheeting rather than dripping. Skim the grey foam as it rises or it will set into the jars as scum.
- Transparent, in batchesAdding the cooked pieces a few at a time keeps the syrup at temperature and lets each piece candy through. They turn from opaque yellow to a clear rose-amber; that colour change, which comes from the fruit's tannins under long heat, is the doneness signal.
- SeedsQuince pips contain a cyanogenic compound in small amounts and are best left whole. Simmer the cores intact and strain them out as directed; do not chop, crush or blend them.
- Sealing"Drop them in the jars and seal" is open-kettle canning, which the period took for granted and which is no longer considered adequate on its own. Use current practice for a high-sugar, high-acid preserve: clean hot jars, proper two-piece lids, and a boiling water bath, or refrigerate and eat within a few weeks.
Quince was a preserving fruit before it was anything else. Too hard and too astringent to eat raw in most climates, it is loaded with pectin and with tannins that turn a deep pink under long cooking, which made it the ideal candidate for the sugar-heavy larder work of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The word marmalade descends from the Portuguese marmelo, quince, and originally meant a stiff quince paste rather than anything involving oranges. By the time this book appeared, quince trees were still common in American dooryards and the fruit arrived in autumn in quantity, which is why a recipe like this one is scaled to ten pounds and why the book carries more than one version of it. The two-stage method here, drawing a stock from the waste trimmings and cooking the fruit in it, reflects a household economy in which nothing edible left the kitchen unused.