Preserved Quinces / Om kweeperen te konfijten (176)

A bit what I expected - that it wouldn't work because the recipe is too vague (for the modern reader) or not up to date. You're supposed to clean and core(!) the quinces and cook them with sugar on a low temperature. Which is all good and well, but it won't cook, which is why I added some water and let it cook, hoping that it would get syrupy. It went well for a while, until at one point all of a sudden it was very syrupy and started burning.

What had happened? As long as it contained water, it was fine, but seemed too liquid, which I later found out was mainly due to the heat - it became a lot harder when it cooled down. Because I let it simmer for too long, at one point all water had evaporated and the sugar started caramelizing. Actually, this was the most interesting issue, because it showed that this was plain melted sugar (caramel) with lumps of quince in it, but unlike jam it wasn't a sweetened mass of fruit. This distinction is important, because it's a huge difference in the result.

Moreover, my MIL took just one look at the recipe and told me that of course this recipe couldn't work, as the pips contain all the pectin, and that's exactly what you're throwing away. Now I must say that I knew that pips contain pectins, it's just that I thought that fruit in itself contains enough pectin to make it work too - ever made apple jelly? Though, coming to think of it, you'd always use preserving sugar, right?

Edited 15 November 2014: We actually ended up eating all of these preserved quinces, though probably not the way they were intended to eat. It was most useful seen as a mixture between quince jam and membrillo, meaning that we chopped up a spoonful of preserved quinces, and then had them on a sandwich with manchego and a slice of bread. DH actually enjoyed it so much that when I bought a few kilos of quinces this week,he requested that I make this recipe again - though I definitely will also cook the pips, and will possibly also use some preserving sugar instead of normal granulated sugar.