Making Quince Jelly and Paste

The Sweeper

I’m lucky enough to live somewhere that I can get my hands on a glut of fresh fruit, organic, from people’s gardens. However, this also means the fruit isn’t always the sort of perfectly sized and shape stuff we’re used to from the supermarket. Still, it lends itself to preserving in various good ways, especially quince.

Quinces are like giant, misshapen apples, and they’re hard as nails. They don’t soften as they ripen and really aren’t pleasant to eat raw, but apply some heat, and this wonderful, fragrant, sweet fruit comes into its own.

When I get a glut of quinces, I make quince jelly (and this time around quince paste, though I was reminded of why I’m usually too lazy to make it).

This thread is to give anyone who’s interested an idea of what it’s like to make your own preserves in bulk, at home. Oh – and it’s because I got a camera for Christmas and then my mother in law gave me a creel-full of quince and lemons from her garden.



Quince jelly is the juice of stewed, strained quinces, boiled with sugar until it reaches 220 Fahrenheit, which is jelly setting point. Quince paste is the boiled quince and juice together, pushed through a sieve so it forms a delicate curd, cooked with sugar until it thickens and then poured into either jars, or a tray to set and be cut into pieces, dusted with sugar and stored in an airtight box. The jelly uses a simple sugar to juice ratio of three quarters – measure sugar to three quarters of the volume of juice.

For anyone who’s never had it, quince jelly and quince paste are sweet and fruity and excellent with cheese or as a condiment with roast meat. You can make plain or flavoured jellies – to flavour, you add things at the fruit stewing stage, so quince and rosemary jelly, or a christmassy quince jelly with flavours of cinnamon, cloves and star anise.

It seems to help to add lemon juice to the quinces at the stewing stage; this appears to help the clarity of the juice for jelly making. I use the juice of one large lemon for a pot full of quinces. To be honest, I’m not convinced the world would end if you left it out, but hey, it seems to help.









Whether you’re making jelly or paste, first, wash your quinces. Quinces are covered in a sort of fur that’s a natural yeast (as my mother in law discovered the other day, because she’d left some fruit peelings in a heap with a little juice, and returned 48 hours later to find it bubbling and making suspicious ‘gloop’ noises, and stinking of booze).



Once the quinces are washed, chop them into chunks, removing any leaves and brown pieces from the fruit. You leave the skins on and the cores in – these are full of pectin and this is what sets both the jelly and the paste.



I weighed out the quinces I wanted for various recipes – 900g for the flavoured jellies, 1.3kgs for the paste, and the rest went into the plain jelly. Place the quince chunks in a pot, and cover with fresh, cold water. You want to barely cover them. Then set them to simmering.



In terms of how long to simmer the fruit, recommendations vary from 20 minutes up to two hours. I work by sight – you want the fruit to be soft, but for the jelly it’s better if the water has turned slightly pink, but the fruit isn’t completely clouding the water by falling apart completely. For the paste, it’s better if the fruit IS clouding the water by falling apart completely. Let’s say an hour for the jelly, 90 minutes for the paste. Simmering – not furiously boiling until the entire kitchen is obscured by steam.

When you’re happy with the boiled fruit, take it off the heat and let it cool for a while, because the next bit is tricky and it’s best not to do it with boiling fruit.

The Jelly

For the jelly, you separate the fruit from the juice. You need to set up a straining bag. A piece of muslin cloth is perfect for this (I boil mine and hang it over the clothes horse to dry – dries in the time it takes the fruit to boil up). Get a large bowl, large enough for the boiled fruit and juice, and place the muslin in the bowl so that plenty of the cloth spills out over the edges. Then pour the fruit and juice into the bowl. Gather up the edges of the cloth and tie in a knot, making sure none of the pulp can fall out of the bag at a loose edge.

Tie string around the knot in the top of the muslin bag. Now find a way to suspend the bag above the bowl, so that it will drip slowly into the bowl, allowing all of the syrupy juice to strain into the bowl. You can use literally anything you have to set up the bag, over the bowl, not touching, so the juice drips out through the muslin.



It takes a long time for the juice to stop dripping out of the bag, so you may want to leave it overnight. Waiting for it to stop is really boring.

…no, I mean really boring.



It’s best if you leave it overnight and come back to the juice the next day. For quince jelly, you must never, NEVER give into the temptation to squeeze the jelly bag to get the last of the juice out or speed up the process!! This will squeeze fruit pulp into the juice, and your jelly will end up cloudy.

When your fruit juice has drained fully, measure it into a saucepan and add sugar at a rate of three quarters – so 450g sugar to every 600mls juice.

Heat gently to melt the sugar, then turn up the heat to a rolling boil that you cannot stir away. Then lower the heat to a steady simmer. You can use a sugar thermometer if you like, because the temperature you’re aiming for is 220 degrees Fahrenheit, which is jelly setting point.



HOWEVER, it’s worth noting that jellies that turn dark pink but don’t get to 220 degrees Fahrenheit will still set, but it will be a far gentler set. The resulting jelly will keep a pleasant, fragile wobble, sort of like a chilled dessert jelly, best scooped out of the jar with a spoon. If you boil to 220 degrees, the jelly will have a firmer set. You should be able to slice it from the jar with a knife and it will be less spreadable than the less firm type.

If you don’t have a sugar thermometer, you can use the plate test. Spoon some of your simmering mixture onto a cold plate. It should set so that if you run your finger through it, it crinkles, instead of just spreading like a syrup. Quince jelly has the added advantage that there’s a noticeable colour change that takes place when it’s ready. The syrup on the left still has a way to go, the one on the right is ready.



When the syrup is ready, turn the heat off and allow the simmer to die down. Spoon off any scum or bubbles from the top of the clear, red liquid. Carefully pour into warm, sterilised jars. Either seal while piping hot, or allow to cool completely before sealing.

The Sweeper

The Paste

The paste is a bit different.

You can make quince paste in two ways – the method I’m describing here results in a paste with a texture like a slightly grainy Turkish delight. If you want a heavier paste with a more granular texture, you can simply use the contents of the muslin bag after you’ve strained the juice off for quince jelly.

You don’t need to leave this straining overnight. When the contents of the pot has cooled a bit, set up a sieve over a large bowl. Give the fruit pulp and juice a good stir, so it breaks down into a mush. Then spoon the mush into the sieve, and push through into the bowl, so you get a bowl of fine fruit ‘curds’.



The curds look like this:



Discard what’s left in the sieve – cores, skin, seeds, rough pieces. (Please note, if you’re really, really organised, you can peel and core the quince pieces before putting them in the pot, and add the peel and core to the pot tied into a muslin bag, which may make this bit easier – but I’ve never tried it, and peeling and coring raw quince may well be just as much work as pushing the mush through a sieve.)

Weigh the fruit curds before placing into a large saucepan. Add sugar, at a rate of two thirds of the curds – so 400g sugar for every 600mls of fruit curd for instance.



This is where paste and jelly differ. In both cases, you must heat gently to melt the sugar, then turn up the heat to a rolling boil, then turn it down to a rolling simmer. In both cases, it will take about 45 minutes for paste or jelly to change colour from a straw yellow-pink to a deep pink-red, but with the quince paste you must not stop stirring it.



If you stop stirring the paste, it will burn onto the bottom of the pot. Once you’ve burned a batch, the burned flavour goes throughout the mixture and it’s spoiled, so throw it out and start over – you won’t salvage it, and it’s too much work to keep plodding along doggedly hoping it’ll be okay.

(When disaster happens, have one of these. It solves the problem.)



When the paste has thickened and changed colour – about 45 minutes – turn the heat off. While it’s still hot, you can either ladle it into jars, as with the jelly, and seal, or you need to oil a baking tray with a flavourless oil.



Then pour the hot quince paste into the baking tray and allow to cool overnight.



The next morning, tip the set paste out onto a work surface that you’ve covered in icing sugar, cut it into cubes, dust it in sugar and store in an airtight container.

You can make most fruit jellies in almost exactly the same way as the method I’ve described here. The most important aspect is whether your fruit is rich in natural pectin. The pectin is what sets the jelly. Quinces are very rich in pectin, so you don’t need to use jam setting sugar with added pectin. Other fruit won’t have as much, and you’ll need to add pectin to ensure your jelly sets.

Hope this is useful to someone!

harper61

I made above yesterday, I have 600 ml juice made with 6 quinces, 300 ml vinegar, 450 kg sugar & teaspoonful coriander, tastes lovely, put it into jars but it's very runny, any suggestions ?
Perhaps reduce it by boiling some more ?

The Sweeper

300ml vinegar is a whopping amount of vinegar to have added to your water. At most, if I was adding it, I'd add a tablespoon. What does the syrup taste like? I'm not sure what that much vinegar would do to the setting properties of the pectin. If it's too sharp, try buying some jam-making sugar with added pectin, add some to the syrup and then boil until the colour changes from straw to a colour like a clear cordial. That should then set.

Mylow

harper61 wrote: »

I made above yesterday, I have 600 ml juice made with 6 quinces, 300 ml vinegar, 450 kg sugar & teaspoonful coriander, tastes lovely, put it into jars but it's very runny, any suggestions ?
Perhaps reduce it by boiling some more ?

The Sweeper wrote: »

300ml vinegar is a whopping amount of vinegar to have added to your water. At most, if I was adding it, I'd add a tablespoon. What does the syrup taste like? I'm not sure what that much vinegar would do to the setting properties of the pectin. If it's too sharp, try buying some jam-making sugar with added pectin, add some to the syrup and then boil until the colour changes from straw to a colour like a clear cordial. That should then set.

Not as whopping as 450 kg of sugar :-)