Quince is a delightful fruit that is somewhat between an apple and a pear, is available only in the fall, and is usually pretty expensive, even when it is in season. It cannot be eaten raw, and requires a lot of processing to get it to the point of being tasty. It is absolutely improved by the addition of a ridiculous amount of sugar, AND in a historical context, is a great indication of conspicuous consumption: I can afford all this sugar and the time and man power to cook this shit down into a fairly small volume of deliciousness.
You’ve probably seen quince paste for sale at snooty cheese shops (or Whole Foods).
I made this batch with my friend Abigail, who is one of my mentors in historical cooking (we have plans for some epic ridiculousness next year). This is her recipe, which is based on Elinor Fettiplace’s 1604 receipt book:
Boyle your quinces till they been very soft in water, then take them up, & when they are through cold, pare them & take the softest of them, & way to every pound of it a pound of sugar, boyle it till it come to candy, then put in the pap of your quinces, & stir it well togither, then put it in boxes, & so dry it; if you will have it red, put in a pint of water to a pound of sugar, boile it & scum it, then put in yor quinces, in pretie big pieces, cover it close & let it boile, till it bee red, then stir it togither, & boile it till it bee thick inough, then put it in boxes, & so keep it.
I had instructions to get a bunch of quinces and as much sugar as there was quince. I drastically overbought on sugar. DRASTICALLY. By about 4 times as much as I needed.
We took the quices, quartered them and cut out the stem bits, but left the seeds and the cores in (that’s where the pectin is), and boiled the bits until they were soft. A modern version in The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York ( A ) suggests this should take two hours. We let it go for about 45 minutes.
Once they were soft, we pulled them out, but kept the water- it’s full of “magic quince juice” and throwing it away would be a waste of all that delightful pectin and flavor. We let them cool until we could handle them and removed the peels and cores.
Now, in theory, you could push the cooked down quinces through a sieve to smooth out the lumps, and get out any seeds or bit of peel you missed. We tried it, but the sieve Abigail had was too fine and we were getting pure liquid and none of the solids out, so we shrugged and accepted that lumps would occur.
Once we had a beautiful pile of quince goo, we weighed it. It was just over 2.5 pounds of goo, so back into the pot it went, with an equal weight of sugar.
What you do now is let the whole mess cook very low and very slow and stir regularly until it starts to bubble (see video for example) and the goo changes color from pale yellow to more gold (or, if you have the time, you can add water and cook it longer until it turns the pretty red color you can get commercially).
Once it’s reduced and gelled enough that the mixture starts to pull away from the side of the pot, then you stir it constantly until it get to color you want, and you can set it. This took about 4 hours, during which we also picked grapes and processed black walnuts and also ate dinner. We could have let it cook away for another 4 hours easy, if I wanted to have red quince paste, but I didn’t want to spend the time.
It cured for several days before Abigail decanted it, and here it is in it’s sweet, quince-y glory:
Now, imagine doing this when in order to get the sugar, you have to scrape it from a loaf, and in order to cook it, you have to do so over a fire, rather than a stove. This is totally a, “Look at how much money I have, I can afford this ridiculous amount of sugar, and I can afford to have a servant spend their ENTIRE DAY on just this one thing, with other servants helping with tending the fire and shit. I HAVE MORE MONEY THAN IS REASONABLE SO THERE.”
I asked a friend of mine, Wendy, who has been doing some VERY in depth research in Elizabethan grocers and confections, what the cost for 5 pounds of sugar in Elizabethan England would have been, and she responded:
“In 1605 Lord Spencer buys a considerable quantity of loaf sugar at a very high price, 2s. the pound, under the name of Barbary sugar.”[1]
£1 = 20 shillings (s)
1s = 12 pence/penny (d)
Measuring Worth [2], calculates a 16th century £1 = £199.10 in 2014 values. In US dollars £1 = $1.57, or $321.54 to £1 in the 16th century. Sugar by these prices would be $321.54 per pound. Or roughly $160.77 per 5 pounds in modern money.”
Sweets were not a cheap thing. Wendy also shared her source for sugar processed according to 18th century methods, Dobyns and Martin. They are delightful and I could spend a lot of money there. A proper sugar loaf is SUPER hard, and in order to make it useable, an apprentice or a kitchen servant would need to spend a lot of time and energy grating it down.
My quince paste is tucked away until the holidays, where it will be on my family’s table for Christmas.
[1] A History of Agriculture and Prices in England: From the Year After the Oxford Parliament (1259) to the Commencement of the Continental War (1793), Volume 5 Arthur George Liddon Rogers January 1, 1887
[2] Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, “Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a UK Pound Amount, 1270 to Present,” MeasuringWorth, 2015. http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/relativevalue.php
Does it not make you wonder who, in the first place, took one of those really hard, completely inedible, extremely bitter fruits and thought ‘y’know, I reckon if we boil this for hours with LOADS of extremely expensive (or practically unobtainable) sugar, it might just make something vaguely edible’? And who first tried it out? And how much money and time they wasted until they got it right?
If you want to make the most of quinces, you can also make quince jelly with the water instead of mashing it together with the fruit. Once the quince have boiled for a good while, take them out of the water, measure the amount of liquid, add 700g sugar for every litre and boil it down until you can stretch a cooled drop between thumb and forefinger like a thin thread. It’s extremely delicious, plus you can brush it on top of cakes or pies to make them look glossy. And you still have the cooked quince to make paste with!
The closest we can get to the classic sugar loaf is the piloncillo sugar cones available in grocery stores with a Latino customer base. There is at least one specialty site I saw that sells 7 ounce cones of white sugar. Some of my references show heavy duty sugar nippers to chip pieces off the sugar cones.
The price makes sense if you consider that importing sugar had a high overhead cost back in the day. It wasn’t cheap to grow or process and shipments were at the mercy of weather and possible seizure by enemy ships. No wonder it was usually kept under lock and key in metal lined chests.
The is dulce de membrillo – I grew up eating this as a sweet pretty regularly in Argentina. You buy it in large flat tins. I had no idea what it was – we still get cans of it when family/friends visit. It is lovely – glowy and smooth and yummy with crackers and cheese. We are ashkenazi, but it is eaten by everyone in Argentina, as far as I know – easy to find.
Really cool to discover what it actually is. I had no idea what quince was, either. We have a can downstairs – off to enjoy.
I made quince jam this autumn. Absolutely delicious!
I’d always bought expensive quince paste to go with cheese trays, until I discovered that if you have a Portuguese grocery near you, or even a regular grocery store with a decent selection of European imports, that you can often find Ferma brand quince jam where a 1lb brick is $3 instead of $30.
If one pound is worth $320, then five pounds is worth $1,600 — you misplaced a decimal.
Roman cook books might have some recipes for quince paste/loaf.
In Spain & Portugal you can get slices off big loaves and is traditionally eaten with cheese ( Manchego in Spain). In Canada small boxed loaves are available imported from Portugal…just delicious.
I have done two Roman recipes- one is “boil the quinces in honey until it’s done” and the other is “boil quinces in honey with leeks, a bit of fish sauce (kind of), and oil.” Both of these are SO good, and the one with leeks has so many depths of flavor that I cannot even.
I did large batches of both recipes for a Roman SCA feast I did two years ago- cooked them in the fall, and canned them until the feast in February. SO. GOOD.
(1) This sounds too much like work. (2) Is it really very sweet? (3) I would guess all that sugar was produced as a result of slavery, so I am curious… if our various progenitors had more values for the lives of all humans and didn’t force people into slavery, would we have done without sugar?
Jane Loverling wrote: “Does it not make you wonder who, in the first place, took one of those really hard, completely inedible, extremely bitter fruits and thought ‘y’know, I reckon if we boil this for hours with LOADS of extremely expensive (or practically unobtainable) sugar, it might just make something vaguely edible’? And who first tried it out? And how much money and time they wasted until they got it right?”
I wonder that ***all**** the time. Take herbal remedies… what did people endure before they figured out what helps what and which kills one off? Who first thought of cracking open a coconut and how was it managed without a hammer and chisel? I read things in books and wonder how the flip did they ever figure it out.
Math is hard?
£1 1600 = 20s 1600 = £199.10 2014.
So 2s (per lb.) of sugar, 1600 = £19.91 2014.
£1 2014 = $1.57 (2014?). £19.91 x 1.57 = $31.2587 (note second place digit swap)
This is all seriously over-precise, but whatever. Anyway. one pound sugar in 1600-ish, about $31.26 (or $31.25), so five of those: $156.25.
This is an interesting paper that includes time series on retail price and consumption of sugar, among others:
http://www.princeton.edu/rpds/seminars/Voth102809.pdf
I geeked out with glee over this and over the price-value adjustment for the sugar. Thank you!
Yay quince! I have my Armenian great-grandmother’s recipe for quince preserves, and I absolutely love it. It’s much simpler than this – peel and chop quince, and boil with sugar. You get chunks of soft quince which you put onto toast with some of the flavored sugar syrup, and it’s the best darn thing ever. I could share the recipe if anyone’s interested, either here or by email!
P.S. My great grandmother’s secret to the reddish color was to leave some of the peel on the fruit when you chop it. Admittedly though, I’ve never done any experiments to test that theory!
P.P.S. I definitely want to try making this paste – I love quince so much, and it’d be fun to try something new.
Sabrina, I’d love to read the recipe. When I lived in MA, quince was available. Now that I live in So Cal, not at all.
I discovered Membrillo (the Basque name for this deliciousness) last year when I made quince jelly for the first time. Here is the recipe I used for both the jelly and the Membrillo. The oven method really works well, and you will get the lovely red colour if you bake it for the recommended three hours.
http://www.thejoykitchen.com/recipe/quince-jelly
Gloriamarie, have you checked your Latino markets? A friend found piles of quince in hers (granted, in Napa rather than So CA) just a few days ago.
I can’t wait to send her the link to this post!
Why is it that fruit and vegs have so different names in different languages? I was all “WTH is quince?” and then I saw the photo and it was “oh, I used to eat this all the time as a kid”.
As has been mentioned, “dulce de membrillo” is very common in South America, particularly popular with children. How many things to you know that are both fruit (therefore healthy) and have tons of sugar?
I have a very kind sister who makes me quince paste every year. Lucky me.
Sabrina: I tend to always leave the peel on the fruit (and the core, as well, I just use a blender to mash it all together for the paste and you hardly notice anything). It does give a more pronounced colour. Also it’s so much work already, I seriously can’t be arsed to remove the peel and the cores, and they’re packed with pectin and flavour anyway 😉
This looks delish. I’ve never bought quinces, but I noticed some bushes growing outside the office where I used to work (as ornamentals) so I picked a few one year. Not enough for an actual recipe, so I just cut them up and cooked them with sugar, to make a compote.
Although this was very pricey in the old days, I imagine it was also another way to preserve a food that contains Vitamin C to eat during the winter months, since scurvy was an issue.
@Heather: lol, yay for laziness paying off in the kitchen for once! Usually me being lazy equals terrible disastrous baking results.
@Gloriamarie: I live in San Diego, and I can always get quince at my local Middle Eastern market! They have it in now, actually. (Bonus: these stores almost always have six kinds of fresh feta. Mmm, feta).
Here’s my great-grandmother’s recipe:
Berjouhe Havgitian’s Quince Preserves
-4 large pear-green quinces (NOT yellow)
-About 3 cups sugar (2 c fruit/1 c sugar proportion)
-About 3 cups water (2 c fruit/1 c water proportion)
-1 lemon
Sterilize jars.
Wash quince. Slice lengthwise in halves, then in quarters. Cut quarters into eights and then into small bite-sized pieces.
Put fruit, water, and sugar into pan. Bring to boil.
Cook on medium setting until fruit turns brown and liquid is quite reduced, about ¾ – 1 hour. Don’t cook too fast, or there will be too little syrup at the end.
Turn to low and cook until fruit is reddish and liquid is slightly thick or lightly syrupy, about ¼ to ½ hour.
Add juice of one lemon. Pour immediately into jars.
(Note: don’t double recipe, or the flavor suffers.)
Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions.
You can roast quince, they are wonderful served along side fatty meats like duck or pork.
Sabrina, Thank you for the recipe. And, oddly enough, I too live in San Diego. There is a gigantic Middle Eastern market on Clairmont Mesa I have been meaning to check out and for some reason have yet to do so. There is one closer to me on Balboa, but I don’t really like it very much. When mom still had an apartment, we often went to the one on Fletcher Parkway.
Quinces are lovely trees. We had one in Bulgaria. It was shaped a bit like an apple tree with velvety leaves and white flowers with pink middles that are bigger than Apple flowers and smaller than Magnolias. You can add the quince to stuff like apple crisp or apple sauce.
Seriously, if you want a really pretty tree, get a fruiting quince (I’m not sure the Japanese quinces have edible fruit).
sounds interesting.
You can also cook the goo down in an uncovered Crock Pot on high. It takes a while longer, but you don’t need to tend it other than an occasional stir. (I’ve also cooked the fruit overnight in a slow cooker.) It’s great for people with a short attention span.
Of course, as readers we don’t have to worry about the length of our attention spans.
@Gloriamarie – I’ve never been to that one, but I’m a big fan of North Park Produce on El Cajon Boulevard, near 35th street. Great market for Middle Eastern food.