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Dessert

To Preserve Whole or Half Quinces

A method for preserving whole or halved quinces in a sugar and jelly syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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To Preserve Whole or Half Quinces

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pippin jelly

  1. Add the sliced golden pippins to boiling water and boil quickly until the water thickens into jelly.

Cook the quinces in syrup

  1. Scald the quinces.

  2. For each pint of pippin jelly, add 1 lb of sugar and boil, skimming off any impurities.

  3. Add whole quinces to the syrup and boil rapidly.

  4. For halved quinces, skim the syrup and test for jellied consistency before removing from heat.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Fair golden pippins
Provide flavour and pectin-rich juice that helps the liquid set into jelly.
Pippin jelly
Adds pectin and body, helping the syrup thicken and set as it cooks.
Finest sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, at high concentration, helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Test the syrup for jellied consistency before removing from heat. Pectin sets only when enough sugar and acid are concentrated by boiling. Removing the syrup too early leaves it runny and unable to set, while cooking too long makes it stiff and sugary.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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