The Big Quince Harvest

Yesterday I picked 8 quinces from the tree in my back yard. Not only is this a big improvement in quantity over last year's harvest of two, but these quince are full-sized - over 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter. There were also an additional four quince that were too bug-eaten to keep, so next year I'm going to try the trick with putting nylon covers over the growing fruit to protect them.

Of course I now have a bunch of quince to work with, and will have to decide what to do with them.

I could make some of the recipes I've done in the past, like Chardquynce, Quince pie, or the ever popular Marmelade of Quinces. I could also try out something new, like connates perhaps.

Even more exciting though is that Cindy, having seen this year's crop, said she's now convinced that planting the trees wasn't a waste of time and money, and she's even willing to have another fruit tree in the back yard. So now I'm looking through my lists of Medieval Fruit Varieties trying to decide which tree would be the best addition.

Apples
For apples there are a couple of really good varieties that are readily available. The Old Pearmain sounds good, and dates back to the 1300s.

Old Pearmain apple

There's also the Rambour Franc and the Calville Blanc, both of which date to the 16th century.

Pears
There are fewer medieval pear varieties that are readily available. The Red Pear dates back to the 16th century, and the Barland to 1600.

Others
There are some other options - plums, medlars, cherries - that are worth considering, though there aren't many of them that have varieties which are both readily available and known to be medieval.

I'll have to keep looking and see what else I can find.

Apples, Quince, and Cooks

Some quick updates on assorted subjects:

A couple of weeks back I posted about apple pie recipes, where I'd picked out a few potential recipes to try. The one I settled on, Tartys In Applis, worked out pretty well. Grating the apples was really kind of strange, as was the addition of figs. Still it tasted good. better warm than cold in my opinion. I think a dollop of snowe on top would add some fat to make it even better.

I've posted here before about the quince tree I planted in my back yard. While it has flowered for the past two years and some fruits have formed, this is the first year that any have made it to harvest. I picked the two small quince from the tree last week, and last night I made them into marmalade. It's a small thing (the result is only a single pint) but it's still geeking me out. Hopefully there will be more next year.

Finally, the Middle Kingdom Cooks Collegium is this upcoming weekend in Chicago. There will be cooks from all over the midwest United States (and some from farther away) all gathered together to share their knowledge of medieval cooking. I'll be teaching two classes there - one on food safety and another that is sort of an overview on medieval cooking from a sort of holistic viewpoint. In spite of all that I still need to to to get ready for the event, I'm really looking forward to it.

It Must Be Spring!

Looking out the kitchen window this morning, I noticed something looked odd with my quince tree.

Yes, those beautiful pink blossoms are blooming! (Ok, so the picture above is one I took last year - I didn't have enough time this morning to take a new one. I'll try to take some new ones soon).

There are a lot more blossoms this year than last - which only makes sense given that the tree is about two feet taller than it was last spring. Hopefully I'll have better luck and actually get a couple quince from it this year.

Food Related Painting of the Week

Still-life with Parrot
Georg Flegel, ca. 1600

Still-life with Parrot
(from the Web Gallery of Art)

This week I've chosen a German painting full of sweets and such.

Like most still-life paintings, there's a bunch of interesting things scattered about. At the front and just to the right is a round wooden box that is filled with what's probably quince paste (cotignac or membrillo - like marmalade but much more firm, if you haven't tried this stuff then look at the local gourmet grocery, they usually have it near the imported cheeses like manchego - with which it goes exceptionally well!).

I'd be tempted to call the flat things in the lower right trenchers, but by the 1600s the use of trenchers had pretty much fallen out of fashion. They look more like biscotti (zweibaken? my German is not that good). Those things on top are either small pears or (more likely, I think) fresh figs.

The tall silver dish in the center is filled with sugar-covered things. I imagine the stick-shaped ones are strips of orange peel or maybe even horseradish root. I have no idea what the other things are, though the smaller, oval things might be almonds. Notice how nice and white the sugar coating is? I've ranted about the color of medieval sugar before. On a side note, the bumpiness of the sugared items is caused by having the sugar syrup too hot during the coating process. Around the dish of sweets is a plate of dried figs (maybe with some dates as well), a pomegranate, and a small (about 1/4 pound) loaf of bread.

On the left, near the spoons, is a beautiful prunted beaker - I have a set that look almost exactly like it. Behind and under the stack of plates is what looks like a wheel of cheese. I really hope the color of the paint has changed over the centuries, because that's not the color I like my cheese to have.

It wouldn't be that hard to re-create this setup, though I'd cover the table with a nice cloth. I'd also leave out the parrot - I'm sure it's a health code violation.

Chardquynce - Part 2

The quince had been peeled, cored, cut up, and cooked (baked) for 2 hours at 350°F. The pieces were soft enough to smush easily with a spoon. All that was left was to figure out what to do with it. After re-reading all the source recipes, I decided to work primarily from this one:

Chare de Wardone. Take peer Wardons, and seth hem in wine or water; And then take hem vppe, and grinde hem in a morter, and drawe hem thorgh a streynoure with the licour; And put hem in a potte with Sugur, or elle3 with clarefiede hony and canell ynowe, And lete hem boile; And then take hit from the fire, And lete kele, and caste there-to rawe yolkes of eyren, til hit be thik, and caste thereto powder of ginger ynowe; And serue hit forth in maner of Ryse. And if hit be in lenton tyme, leve the yolkes of eyren, And lete the remnaunt boyle so longe, til it be so thikk as though hit were y-tempered with yolkes of eyren, in maner as A man setheth charge de quyns; And then serue hit forth in maner of Rys.
[Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, T. Austin (ed.)]

Being the impatient sort, I used a food processor instead of a mortar and pestle to grind up the fruit (having experimented in the past, I've found that the final result is pretty much the same). I then added sugar, egg yolks, and spices, and then cooked it over medium heat until it started doing the bubbling-oatmeal thing. Here's how it looked when it was done:

mMMmmmm ... quince!

Spicing is always an issue when working from medieval sources - it's rare that a medieval recipe specifies quantities for anything. When I tasted this stuff during cooking, it seemed too bland, so I wound up putting in more ginger. When it was done it tasted great to me, and my wife liked it too. However it received a less than positive reception from a couple of people who don't normally eat medieval foods. I suspect it has a bit more ginger than the general population cares for.

I'll have to try out the same recipe using pears, possibly with less ginger and more cinnamon.

Chardquynce

Interpreting out a medieval recipe can be a challenge sometimes. The one I'm currently working on is a good example.

I got some fresh quince (mmMMMmm ... quince) at Jungle Jim's and was looking for something new to make with them, when I came across the following recipe:

To mak chard wardene tak wardens and bak them in an oven then tak them out and paire them and grind them in a mortair and streyne them smothe throwghe a streyner then put them in an erthene pot and put ther to sugur till they be douced as ye think best and put ther to pouder of notmeggs guinger and granes and let the pouder be farcede put ther to powder of sanders tille it be coloured and stirr it with a pot stik and set yt on a soft fyere and let it boile till yt be stiff as leche lombard and ye put amydon or rise it is bettere and when it is cold lay it fair abrod in the coffyn and let it stond ij dais and ye liste strawe senymom upon it and a day aftur the bred is out of the ovene then set it ther in and it shalle en be hard and then ye shall mak chardquynce. [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

This is a recipe for pears, but what caught my eye was (of course) the word chardquynce. The last half of the word is obviously a reference to quince (and in case you didn't know, "wardens" are a type of pears). The first half doesn't mean burned though, but is a Middle-English word meaning "meat" or "flesh", so this recipe is for the cooked flesh of pears but it also mentions quince.

A quick search turned up several recipes for chardwarden, but only a single one that specifically called for quince. Weird. Looking at these recipes further, I discovered a bit of variation.

Chared coneys, or chardwardon is a mix of quince and pears, peeled and cored, cooked until soft, mashed, mixed with honey and spices, and cooked until very thick. I suspect the end result would be somewhat like marmalade or jelly.

Chardewardon and Chare de Wardone - recipes very similar to the one given in full above - is a recipe for cooked pears which references chardquince at the end. The pears are boiled, ground up, strained, mixed with sugar and spices, and them mixed with egg yolks and cooked until thick. This would be more like a fruit pudding.

Now I could just go ahead and make the marmalade-like recipe, but I'm in the mood to try something different. So my current plan is to hybridize these recipes into a stereotypical Chardquynce.  I've already got the quince peeled, cored, and cooked until soft, so tonight I'll mix them with the sugar and spices, and then add egg yolks and cook the stuff until it is pudding-like.  Tomorrow I'll post about how it turns out.

Very Small Fruit

A quick update on a very important topic: my quince tree.

The petals have all dropped off now, and the base of the flower has started to swell. Each of the five or six fruit (it was hard to count them because of the wind) is about a half inch in diameter - a bit smaller than a grape. As can be seen in the photo below, they're also already starting to turn yellow.

awww, they're so cute when they're little

(click to embiggen)

I believe the fruit above is from the flower pictured in my last post on the topic. The stamen look rather eldritch to me. Hopefully that will scare off the deer.

Flower Power!

Back in the late summer of 2006, I ordered a quince tree from a nursery in California. I'd never planted a fruit tree before, but I'd read plenty on the topic, and dreamed about it for years, and finally managed to get my wife to reluctantly agree to getting one. So did a lot of searching and researching, and picked Cydonia oblongata as the variety I wanted. The tree was delivered by UPS in a big (and heavy) cardboard box. I followed the included instructions and watched it grow for the next year and a half. Nothing much happened of course (except for a couple attacks by bugs). It didn't blossom or fruit the first year, but that was expected since quince flower from the ends of new growth.

This year is apparently a different story though. When I went back to check on it last Thursday (and make sure the bugs hadn't attacked again), I saw little rosy-salmony-colored flower buds at the end of each branch. It's going to flower this year, neat! So I checked again yesterday and here's what I found:

so that's what quince blossoms look like

(click for huge image)

This means that with any luck I'll have home-grown quince sometime around October, and home-grown quince leads to home-made quince marmalade!

Why is that so exciting? You've never had quince marmalade, have you? Let me try to explain ...

To say that quince is a close relative of the apple doesn't quite put it in perspective. The quince is everything the apple has ever wanted to be but just can't. It has an incredible fragrance, and because of it's high natural pectin content, it is perfect for making preserves. In fact in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were quince trees in just about every farm yard just because of its usefulness. The quince isn't perfect though. It's kind of funny looking. It's also usually to hard and astringent to eat raw, and therefore needs to be cooked before eating.

And therein lies the big problem. The vast majority of people in the US nowadays don't cook. They want ready-to-eat food. This makes quince unlikely to be a big seller at the corner grocery, if it's stocked there at all.

Things are looking up though. Quince can often be found in ethnic groceries, and I've even started to see them from time to time in the big chain stores. Take a look next time you're in amongst the produce. If you find some, take them home, cut them up, and cook them. From that point on an apple will never be able to look you in the eye again.