Quince paste

Wash and brush 3 ½ cups quinces, but do not peel, as the skin add to the flavour.

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.

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.

After cooking, discard the lemon pieces and pass the quinces through a vegetable mill on "fine" setting.

Do not throw away the cooking liquid.

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.

Weigh 2 cups 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 2 tablespoons jam sugar.

Put the saucepan on high heat and bring to the boil, then tip in the 50 g of sugar with its gelling agent.

Mix well, bring back to the boil and cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add the rest of the sugar all at once.

Mix well, bring back to the boil and cook for a further 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Pour into a mould or tin, lined with a sheet of cooking parchment.

Leave to cool for at least 1 hour.

Turn out and cut into pieces about the size of a sugar cube.

You can make the paste look more attractive by rolling the pieces in a little granulated sugar, but this is not essential.