SC - The great Christmas pudding experiment. And quinces! [Partial OOP]

[Kerri Canepa]

>Deep breath.  Now, the contignac.  I was following the recipe in Scully's
>_Early French Cookery_.  Lost a fingernail in peeling the quinces.
>Boiled them in wine until soft, okay fine.  Now, push through a strainer.
>
>Welcome to Hell.
>
>My strainer is a pretty fine mesh, and even a soft quince requires a
>heck of a lot of effort to get through there.  I pushed, rubbed, and
>snarled for as long as it took the goop reached room temperature, and
>over half of it was still on the wrong side of the mesh.  As a test, I put
>a big spoonful into the blender, but the consistency was definitely
>different; it wouldn't do.

Well, I've been around this neck of the woods recently myself. Fortunately,
there were two batches of quinces going and after myself and my apprentice wore
out our arms with the first batch and a strainer, let the second batch cook
until it was nearly dry. That went much faster. 

So I guess the idea is to cook the quinces until they're not just soft but
mushy.

Personally, I found peeling and coring them to be an even bigger chore. Wow,
they are HARD. I almost broke a paring knife trying to wrestle a core chunk from
a quarter slice of fruit. 

A question: do quinces ever get any softer as they get older? These were looking
pretty bruised but were still very hard.

Kerri
Cedrin Etainnighean, OL
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