SC - Turkey Day post-mortem

[James F. Johnson]

As I have not been privy to previous topics,
being newly arrived,  I would like to ask whether
marmalades are of interest.  Since the seasonal
availabilty of affordable quinces is upon us all, 
I would entertain discussion of period marmalades.
Personally, I have made several batches over the 
past few years of Condoignac and Chardequynce
according to recipies circa 1394 and circa 1444.
The problem of making this excellent food is mainly
its expense.  For no small reason was this a favoured
gift to nobles; the honey and red wine was prohibatively
costly.  A real jewel of a book on this subject is
THE BOOK OF MARMALADE, C. Anne Wilson, St.
Martins, NY, 1985.

The key step in making affordable Condoignac and
chardequyences is finding cheap quinces.  You need
a lot of them and at $2.00 each in the specialty fruit
section of Krogers, it hurts.  Scope out stores which
have a overstock of them (few mundanes have the
sense to know that you can't eat an uncooked quince).
Hence, the produce manager usually has the dilemma
of a wrinkling, unsaleable fruit (which was largely unsalable
in its perfection anyway).  I have offered to buy out all
of the unsalable stock (still perfectly usable) and usually get
get 30 pounds or so at 10 cents on the dollar.  This makes
it possible at least for several cooks to pool their resouces
to make this delish dish.  It is a magnificant 12th Night gift
to the local tin hats!  You can't scimp on the honey and wine
too much and have a tasty result.  It also takes forever(!!) to 
reduce all that wine, pulp and honey down to the consistancy
of a stiff but still soft peanut brittle.

I will stop here and await your comment on this subject before
going into greater detail.  Please bear with me if I do not 
respond quickly to your on-list commentary as I subscribe via 
digest and it will take a day to filter down for me to reply.
However, I will be happy to have any immediate or off topic 
needs addressed to my private e-mail, 
ringofkings at mindspring.com

Akim Yaroslavich
"No glory comes without pain"

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