To make a Quiddany.

I think I will start a campaign to bring back lovely lost old food words. Yesterday's dunelm will be somewhere on the list, but the first will be quiddany (or quiddony or quidini or several other variations). The word appears to be related to the old French codignat meaning a fruit jelly – the ‘q’ perhaps coming from the association with quinces (although they were made from many fruits).

I don’t know why or how we lost the name, but it seems very remiss of us. I think I will start a campaign to bring back lovely lost old food words. All the campaign needs is a catchy name …

Some quidonnies are thick, syruppy, ‘wet’ preserves, but this one, from Hugh Plat’s Delights for Ladies (1602) appears to be more of a fruit paste. I love the idea of rose-water with the quinces.

To make Quidinia of Quinces.
Take the kernelles out of eight Quinces, and boyle them in a quart of Spring-water, till it come to a pint: then put into it a quarter of a pint of Rose-water, and one pound of fine sugar, and so let it boile til you see it come to be of a deep colour: then take a drop, and drop it on the bottom of a sawcer; and if it stand, take it off; then let it run thorow a gelly-bag into a bason; then set on your bason upon a chafing-dish of coales, to keepe it warm: then take a spoone, and fill your boxes as full as you please: and when they be cold, cover them: and if you please to print it in moulds, you must hove moulds made to the bigness of your boxe, and wet your moulds with Rose-water, and so let it run into your mould: and when it is cold, turn it off into your boxes. If you wet your moulds with water, your gelly will fall out of them.


Quotation for the Day …

I would stand transfixed before the windows of the confectioners' shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscope inflorescence of acidulated fruitdrops -- red, green, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasure they promised me.
Simone de Beauvoir.