Muirne's Musings and Rants

Baroness Aelfgifu brought me the quinces I asked for, so I needed to do something with them. I thought it would be great to make some quince paste to serve at the February event.

Do you know how many quince recipes there are in medieval and renaissance cookbooks?

Alot.

So I read many different recipes, and decided to try the recipe for Paste of Genoa from Markham, but with a slight variation from another recipe which called for boiling the quinces in red wine rather than water. I split the difference and boiled them in both wine and water until tender, then pureed them, weighed them and added an equal weight of sugar, threw in some cinnamon, ginger, and rosewater, and cooked the mixture down until it was fairly stiff. I still have plenty of quinces left, and should be getting more, so I'll be experimenting with other recipes over the next few weeks.

( Pictures for those who are interested. )