[Sca-cooks] A Quince Puzzle

[David Friedman]

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/