By Rebecca Laroche

Through a current collaboration with Thomas Ward (United States Naval Academy), I have found something of interest in early modern quince preserves.[i] Across the Wellcome Library Digitised Collection, examples of recipes “To preserve quinces” evenly divide between two (or three types), “To preserve quinces red” and “To preserve quinces white” (the third category being some mixture or in-between of the two).[ii] Regularly, a white quince recipe will be on the same page as a red one, which presents an immediate choice to the preserver. In close reading, I have come to realize that this choice is about something more than color.

Setting a red recipe next to a white one, we can begin to suss out the issues, but three late seventeenth/early eighteenth century recipes provide both the red and white options within one entry and thus make the differences most apparent.  Generally, red quinces are  boiled at a “leisurely” pace (one recipe, MS 3341/009, records a four hour process,), covered, and with lower grade of sweetener (not necessarily refined sugar, even using fruit juices instead, which also added a gelling component).  White quinces are often boiled rapidly in the syrup made with double refined sugar, sometimes cooked before being added to the syrup, and, at some point determined by fruit tenderness, color change, and/or syrup thickness, the quinces are removed from the syrup to cool while the syrup continues to thicken, and then they are added again later in the process.  Much of the time making red quinces is uninterrupted, allowing for “multi-tasking,” either in or out of the kitchen.

Not necessarily so in preserving white quinces.  Not only are you often told to boil the quinces “as fast as you can uncouered” (see MSs 7818/52, 7999/10, 3341/10), which would present the danger of boiling over and burning, the added step of taking them up before they turn red requires extreme care.  One recipe even calls for “shifting” the quinces into “water ready to boil,” not once or twice, but “into seuerall such waters till they be tender (MS 2330/5).

Clearly white quinces are more difficult to make as they require extra care and a larger proportion of time spent watching the pots. Because much of this care is about anticipating the moment of color change, the implication is that the more a person makes the white quince recipe, the more aware she or he would be of signs of the oncoming change. That is, the more experienced preserver would be more prepared and his or her quinces would thus be whiter.

It follows, then, that the choice between red and white quinces has meaning beyond a color preference or even taste. Whether or not white quinces taste better than red ones is almost beside the point. If you present white quinces at the table, you signified an occasion deserving of the more “high maintenance” preserve, whereas red quinces, made at a more leisurely pace and with cheaper ingredients, are likely to be your “everyday” variety. At least the experienced cooks among your guests would appreciate the difference.