[Sca-cooks] A Quince Puzzle
David Friedman
ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Sun Oct 6 16:05:39 PDT 2013
My quince tree has been producing, and having made a fair amount of
al-Warraq's preserved quince I decided to try something else. Dawson has
a recipe for condomacke of quinces which consists of peeling,
quartering, and coring the quinces, boiling them in one part wine to
four parts water until they are soft, then :
thake a peece of fine cavas & put your quinces and liquor in it, and
when your sirrope is all runne through,*** put in so much fine suger as
will make it sweete, and set it over a quicke fire againe, surring with
a sticke til it be so thicke that a drop will stand upon a dish, then
take it from the fire and put it in boxes.
I have put asterisks in to mark the puzzle. At that point I have two
things--about a pint of liquid containing wine, water, and quince juice,
and about 3/4 c of quince mush from which I have squeezed out as much
juice as I can. Which of the two am I using for the rest of the recipe?
The "so thicke that a drop will stand" passage suggests it's the liquid,
since the mush is about the texture of apple sauce, doesn't form drops,
and stands just fine without any additional cooking. On the other hand,
the liquid doesn't really require stirring until it's thickened quite a
bit--at the moment it's simmering and I will check that prediction in a
little bit.
Can anyone here who either knows marmalade and related recipes better
than I do or is more familiar with the 16th c. nouvelle cuisine than I
am offer an opinion? Obviously the ultimate test is to do both and see
how they come out, which is what I'm doing--the mush is now in a jar
after about five minutes of cooking, the liquid simmering.
This reminds me somewhat of my experiments with the preserved quince. I
fill up the jar with the solid part, leaving a surplus of liquid--honey
and quince juice. My first idea was to use the surplus to make quince
sekanjabin. I added vinegar, boiled the liquid down until it looked
suitably thick, put it in a container--and it jelled on me, presumably
because of the pectin from the quince, although I might have gotten the
syrup too thick.
So I did it again without vinegar, and now have a quince jelly with a
very strong honey taste. I wonder how close this is to what Dawson is
producing, using sugar instead of honey.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
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