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Apple and Quince Jam
Take 1 pint of quince juice, left from preserves, add 1 pound of sliced apples, and 3/4 pound of sugar. Boil 2 hours, stirring well. Pour into glasses while hot and seal. The jam must be thick and well blended.
A thrift recipe: the pale, perfumed liquid left over from making quince preserves is put back to work with apples. It assumes you have that juice on hand, and it assumes a much longer boil than a modern cook would give it.
- The quince juiceThis is the strained syrup or cooking liquid left from a batch of quince preserves — highly aromatic and very high in pectin, which is what sets the jam. If you have no quince preserves in progress, simmer 1 lb of chopped quinces (cores and peels included) in water to cover for about 45 minutes and strain to get your pint.
- Boil 2 hoursFar longer than needed on a modern burner. With quince pectin and only 1 lb of fruit, the jam will reach setting point in roughly 30 to 45 minutes of steady boiling. Go by temperature — 220F/104C at sea level — or by the cold-plate wrinkle test, not the clock. Two hours will give you dark, caramelised fruit butter rather than jam.
- Sugar proportionThree-quarters of a pound to a pound of fruit is at the lower end of the usual period range, and the leftover preserving syrup will already carry sugar of its own, so the effective ratio is higher than it looks. Do not reduce it further, as the sugar is doing preservation work as well as sweetening.
- The applesA firm, tart cooking apple such as Granny Smith or Northern Spy holds together longer; Bramley breaks down to a purée quickly. Peel and core them; the original says only 'sliced' and presumably assumes prepared fruit.
- Stirring wellThe hinge of the recipe. The pan scorches easily once the mixture thickens. Use a heavy-bottomed pan and stir across the whole base, not just in circles.
- Pour into glasses and seal"Glasses" are jelly tumblers, and the usual period seal was commonly a disc of melted paraffin wax poured over the surface, though the recipe does not say. That method is no longer recommended, as the wax shrinks and admits mould. Use standard canning jars and process 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath, or simply refrigerate and use within a month.
- YieldAbout three half-pint jars.
Quince was a preserving staple long before it was a curiosity — the fruit is hard, astringent and barely edible raw, but it is one of the richest sources of pectin in the orchard, and it turns rose-pink with long cooking. The word marmalade descends from marmelo, the Portuguese for quince. What this recipe records is the household economy of a fruit-preserving kitchen: the leftover juice, still loaded with setting power and perfume, was stretched with cheap apples into a second batch of something to put on the shelf. Apple and quince are a long-established pairing, the apple supplying bulk and mild sweetness while the quince supplies scent and set.