Quince Jam

Quince Jam Recipe Current Version

Our take on quince jam is relatively sour and intense. We do not like jelly, so add this to the jam to make it more intense.

Ingredients

about 3 Kg Quinces

2 Lemons

1kg sugar, half of which containing pectin (jam sugar in Germany)

about 10 1lb jars

2016 Alteration, this was too sweet this year as our quinces were riper than usual. next time I will back off on the sugar.

Instructions

Peel and core the quinces, putting the peel and any parts of the core that come out without seeds (they have very woody centres) in one pan, the fruit in chunks in another. A third pile for compost contains the bruises and other bad parts as well as the parts of the cores containing seeds as they are poisonous. Quinces brown quickly, but this colour turns to a light orange brown (the jelly goes pink). I added the juice of the lemons here, but they did not seem to help.

Seeded Part (top), Woody outer core for cooking below

Fruit in the pan, already gone brown

Peel and hard parts in second pan, ready for cooking

The bruises, seed cores and stalks for compost (not for eating)

Add 500 ml of water to each pan and simmer gently until the large chunks are beginning to fall apart

Turn off the heat and liquidise the fruit. I use a stick mixer thing. Do not mash the contents of the peel pan, as you don't want to eat these.

Run the peel and cores through a fine sieve and squeeze it. I made jelly once with this (ran it through a coffee filter), but it had to be very sweet to get it to set and we did not like it. This time I added it without filtering it straight to the other pan. If you do not do this you will have to add more water at this stage.

Add sugar and boil carefully, now it is a thick gunge it does burn on easily.

I gave it a boil to jam properly, testing with a cold plate. The boil time and temperature can be used to vary the colour. During this time I prepared the jars and lids. As there is a lot of fibre and particles in the "jam" it becomes something intermediate between jam and baby food.

Decant into jars, it is done.

The whole process took a while so plan some time for it..