Mrs. sandbenders Quince Cheese recipe

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Nov 29, 2004
7,808
22
Scotland
By demand, Mrs. sandbenders Quince Cheese recipe.

I would have liked to include more photos but these are the only ones I have to hand, Quince Cheese is something usually prepared at the beginning of December (the Hungarian santa comes on the 5th December) I'll take some more this year and post them into this thread.

Quince cheese has a very long shelf life without refrigeration, in many ways it is an ideal trail snack.

Enjoy. :)


Ingredients:

Quince
Sugar

Equipment:

Pressure cooker
Plates
silicon moulds (optional)

Method:

Place the Quince (skin and all) in a pressure cooker with a little water (depth about 2cm).

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Bring to boil, once the steam begins to escape from the cooker, cook for a further ten minutes.

Check the quince, the flesh should be so soft that you can scrape it away with the back of a spoon.

Allow to cool, they should be cool enough for you to handle, remove from pressure cooker and retain the fluid that remains for later.

Use your fingers to remove the flesh from the cores - this way it is easy and takes less time.

(Of course it is possible to chop up the raw quince and cook it in a pot as well, in this case I would put any offcuts (the core etc.) in a thin cloth bag and cook it together with the flesh - so that the pectin is not lost.)

Weigh the resulting pulp.

Other recipes call for as much as eighty percent of the pulp weight in sugar, thus one kilogram of pulp should have 800g of sugar added to it. However we have successfully used as little as fifty percent with no problems.

You can mix the sugar directly into the pulp, however I mix it with some of the fluid left at the bottom of the pressure cooker, the aim is to use just enough of the fluid to dissolve all of the sugar to form a syrup.

(If one uses too much fluid the cheese dries slower, although it has the advantage of containing all the pectins, which helps with the setting.)

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Mix the resulting syrup in with the pulp and stir continuously while cooking (be careful as it will spit). Don’t cook it for too long.

Lemon juice can be added as well to keep the nice colour (and walnuts at the end if you like.)

Take a small amount and pour onto a flat plate, watch how quickly it solidifies.

Once I didn’t trust that it would set properly and ran down to the shop to get some pectin, but in these 20 minutes the whole 4 litres became a solid block, was very hard to destroy it by adding more water - retrospectively I think I should have just cut it up to slices with a thread on a wooden board.

Pour onto your plates (or silicon moulds), you should aim for a depth of around one centimetre.

(If added sugar is 70%, that will preserve if from mold, so it can be even thicker.)

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Once set, flip out of moulds

Allow to cool and keep in an airy cool environment. You can cover the plates with a piece of grease paper/cloth (it shouldn’t stick to it) to prevent dust or insects landing on them. Check regularly, and flip them over occasionally.

(When I cover my jams with cellophane, they dry out so much after a while, they become solid as fruit cheese. My store is quite warm in the summer.)

Here is a picture showing some shaped quince cheese placed into a mézes kalács (honey cake) block.

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Dave

Hill Dweller
Sep 17, 2003
6,019
9
Brigantia
Yummy. :) Does quince taste like pear then?

At the risk of sounding bit thick, why do they call it cheese?
 
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Nov 29, 2004
7,808
22
Scotland
Yummy. :) Does quince taste like pear then?

At the risk of sounding bit thick, why do they call it cheese?

No, it is a tangy almost orange taste, difficult to describe really. I have no idea why they call it cheese, it looks nothing like cheese and doesn't have a cheese like texture.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Give Mrs Sandbender a hug please ? :D ask her for one back :)

Thank you :) I'm going to have a bumper crop of quince this year, I will try this out :D

cheers,
Mary
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
Okay, I'm buying a quince tree in bare root season. Do you know what specific type those big lemon sized ones are please?

Oh and can you hug Mrs sandbender too? Mainly cos I'm never one to pass up the opportunity to hug a good cook :)
 

Macaroon

A bemused & bewildered
Jan 5, 2013
7,209
362
73
SE Wales
The smell and taste of Quince is one of nature's true delights; apart from all the edible things I always have four or five of them just sat in a small basket on the desk, and they scent the room sublimely right through to the Spring...................Delightful!
 
Nov 29, 2004
7,808
22
Scotland
Okay, I'm buying a quince tree in bare root season. Do you know what specific type those big lemon sized ones are please?

Oh and can you hug Mrs sandbender too? Mainly cos I'm never one to pass up the opportunity to hug a good cook :)

Oh, she is a very good cook. :)

In another post cranmere suggested that the ones in my pictures were

"...true tree quince Cydonia oblonga...."

Which may well be true, here they are known as Bereczki Quince (Cydonia oblonga Bereczki), you can read about them here.

The smell and taste of Quince is one of nature's true delights; apart from all the edible things I always have four or five of them just sat in a small basket on the desk, and they scent the room sublimely right through to the Spring...................Delightful!

Back in the Transylvania where Mrs. sandbender hails from it was the norm to place the Quince in a line atop all of the kitchen furniture to make the kitchen smell nice.

:)
 
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copper_head

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 22, 2006
4,261
1
Hull
Ah now that looks lovely. Is it the same as Membrillo? My mum makes that from a friends Quinze crop.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Is this like cotignac ? that's a firm sort of jelly like sour sweet thing served with cheese ? Like thickish sticks ? we call them batons. Bite of cotignac and then one of cheese. Has to be good cheese though.
It can be made with rowans and apples, lime or lemon if available, and simmered down until it comes away like choux pastry in the pan, then quickly put out onto a big ashet and spread level.

M
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
:D well, you know Scots :D actually the Yorkshiremen do something similar, they have fruit cake and cheese :)

Anyway, something else comes to mind; the threads on using hawthorn berries to make fruit leather, that the vast majority of us were seriously underimpressed with despite RM's enthusiasm for the stuff.
We might not grow many quince trees in the UK, but we do grow hawthorns, rowans and apples......:D

M
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
I finally got around to making cotignac….or quince cheese or membrillo.
I have a flowering quince, the little japonica shrub and it produces walnut sized (and smaller) fruits, so nothing near the size of the big pear type ones.
That said though, it's edible and it's highly scented and rather lovely.

I de-seeded the quinces, I only had enough to fill and half fill a litre jug, and added three mugs of water (about three quarters of a litre, maybe a bit less). I brought it up to the boil, lowered the heat and put the lid on the pot. I let it simmer for nearly half an hour.
By then the fruits were happily turning to mush, so I just poured the whole lot into a big sieve over a clean pot. Then I used a wooden spoon and pushed as much as I could of the pulp through the sieve. I got a little over a litre, and I then added half a kg of sugar to the slurry. Stirred to dissolve and then brought it up to the boil. Lowered the heat, and stirred pretty much constantly for twenty minutes. Then I poured it out onto two silicon lined trays.
It sets really, really, quickly, and it sets like fruit jellies :D

It's lovely. It's golden coloured, it's shiny and firm and tastes both sour and sweet, and I cut some up with biscuit cutters and have made everything from snowflakes to holly leaves. I cut some into the traditional batons too though, and I've transferred all my little cut outs onto silicon sheets and they're in the dehydrator now.
We're too damp here to do as Mrs Sandbender does, but apparantly an oven on really low, like meringue making low, works fine too.

Firm enough to pick up like fruit jellies, tasty with cheese, haven't tried them added to cake yet.
Very pleased indeed :D

Photos when Himself gets back from his walk and downloads them for me :cool:

cheers,
Toddy

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Macaroon

A bemused & bewildered
Jan 5, 2013
7,209
362
73
SE Wales
It is lovely stuff, isn't it? I pick japonica locally and distribute to the local women who have reached an age where they can't do that bit, and in return gat a small slab from four or five different makers. All different but equally delicious; only problem with it is it doesn't last long before I've munched through it on my rambles!

All the fruits in this part of the valley seem to be Japonica, two miles further on you only find the true Quince varieties but I've never worked out why......Again, different but equally delicious!
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
It is lovely stuff :D
Yeah, I can see it being added to rambling food :)

How dry do the ladies manage to make theirs ? and how do you keep it ?
I know that some of the recipes out there say to roll it in sugar, like crystallised ginger, but I'm not sure I want to do that to it. My Grandpa kept his in a bit of greaseproof paper. A seasonal treat that an Aunt arranged to have sent to him every year. Like some folks get marzipan fruits kind of thing.
He ate it in wee slivers with cheese and oatcakes.

I'm very fond of the scent of the fruits in the house, and I do like the cotignac batons too.
I thought I'd try a cake with the shapes added like the honey cake that Mrs Sandbender made.
If I get enough fruits next year I think I'll try making a clear jelly from it too, like the rowan and apple one.

M
 

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