[Sca-cooks] Quince juice

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Sat Oct 15 15:46:18 PDT 2011


Sorry for coming in on this a bit late...

Galefridus wrote:
> Anyone got any thoughts on how to make quince juice from scratch? I have a
> recipe from al-Warraq that calls for "freshly pressed" quince juice. I
> picked up a couple of fresh quinces, but I'm not sure how to proceed.

Depends on a few things. First, the recipe. Quinces are rather hard raw and not terribly juice. A couple may not be enough.

Second, depends on the recipe writer's idea of "fresh". We modern cooks think of raw juice, as what can be made with a juicer (big motorized centrifugal thing). But they might mean "freshly made".

Johnna wrote:
> Apparently you can buy quince juice. It's made in Turkey according to  
> the website above. Maybe a Middle Eastern grocery store?

Having made quince syrup (yes, not fresh juice) from scratch, then purchasing a bottle of commercial juice, i can say that the commercial stuff is quite tasty, and if you've never had homemade quite delicious. But it cannot compare to the flavor of homemade quince syrup.

Given that so many recipes call for cooking fruits, i would suggest cooking the fruit to get the "juice". Cut the well-washed quince in big chunks and covering with much water and cooking for a long time until the quince is quite tender. DO NOT MASH. I did when i made the sharab and it took a VERY long time to strain out all the liquid (like, overnight). Rather, when the water is flavorful and amber colored, lift out the chunks carefully, then strain the remainder - a jelly bag might be good to run the liquid through.

My quince sharab recipe (Laimun Safarjaliyya) - not what you'll be making, but pretty darn tasty - is at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~al-tabbakhah/2001_Feasts/persianrecipes.html#quince
Since i was cooking for about 100, i made a large quantity. Bought a case of quinces, reserving a certain number for Chicken and Quinces,from Ein Buch von Guter Spise, in the feast i made the following month.

Also, i suspect that cloudiness won't matter a great deal, unless the recipe specifies that it should not be cloudy. If this is being used to cook meat in, clear or cloudy will not matter, since the meat will add its own cloudiness :-)

Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)



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