Quince paste

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 900 g, you will need:

• 1 800 g quince
• 2 ½ lemon
• 3 450 g granulated sugar
• 4 30 g jam sugar
• 5 1 orange (optional)
• Total weight: 1,345 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
33 min.	1 hour	30 min.	2 hours 3 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Wash and brush 800 g quinces, but do not peel, as the skin add to the flavour.
2	Cut the quinces into quarters, then remove and discard the core. Cut each quarter into small pieces. Put the quince pieces into a saucepan, add ½ lemon cut into 4 and just enough water to cover. Note: From 800g of quinces, you should be left with 500 g of cut fruit.
3	Put the pan uncovered on medium heat and cook until the fruit is soft enough for the point of a knife to go through it easily.
4	After cooking, discard the lemon pieces and pass the quinces through a vegetable mill on "fine" setting. Do not throw away the cooking liquid.
5	Transfer the quince pulp into a saucepan and weigh it (from 500 g cut fruit, you should be left with about 350 g of cooked pulp). Weigh 30% of this weight in cooking liquid (100 g here), then mix this with the quince pulp. You can add the zest of 1 orange at this point.
6	Weigh 450 g granulated sugar (this should be the same wieght as the mixture of fruit pulp and cooking liquid). Take out 50 g of this sugar at mix it separately with the 30 g jam sugar.
7	Put the saucepan on high heat and bring to the boil, then tip in the 50 g of sugar with its gelling agent.
8	Mix well, bring back to the boil and cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
9	Add the rest of the sugar all at once.
10	Mix well, bring back to the boil and cook for a further 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
11	Pour into a mould or tin, lined with a sheet of cooking parchment. Leave to cool for at least 1 hour.
12	Turn out and cut into pieces about the size of a sugar cube.
13	You can make the paste look more attractive by rolling the pieces in a little granulated sugar, but this is not essential.

Remarks

This is a very ancient sweetmeat, particularly appreciated at the French court during the Renaissance. It was apparently a favourite of both Marie de' Medici and the Duc de Guise.

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