Jam fail: What happened?

[cteavin]

I'm the Pomona Pectin kinda jam maker. Not really into eating a lot of sugar but I have 20kg of quince and always heard it was the easiest fruit to jam because it has enough pectin. 

 

The recipe I followed had me chop up 3 quince to extract the pectin. To that I added the peels and cores of 8 other quince. I boiled them in just enough water to cover for about 2 hours, drained that off and had 3.5kg of liquid. I shredded the other quince which gave me 1.5kg of fruit. I combined them with 5kg of sugar (the combined weight of the water and fruit) and split them into two separate pots and added 2 grams citric acid and cooked, and cooked, and cooked and they never set. At 104C both pots were liquid and failed the wrinkle test. They continued to fail that test until I got to 115C at which time they were caramelizing and the foam was getting bad. 

 

In the end, I strained both to separate the fruit from the (now) syrup. The fruit is pretty good -- definitely candied. The syrup tastes fine, but is definitely syrup and not jelly. 

 

Where did I go wrong? 

 

Was there just too much liquid 1.5kg fruit to 3.5kg liquid?

Did I damage the pectin by boiling 2 hours? 

Not enough citric acid? 

Too much sugar? I went 1:1, maybe it should be 1:1 to the fruit, not water plus fruit?

 

I have more than enough quince to try again, so I'm trying to troubleshoot. 

[AAQuesada]

3.5 L That's way too much water!  I would say don't add any water and just make a packet in cheesecloth of the seeds and peels and cook everything together. The fruit and sugar should provide enough liquid. Then just remove the packet towards the end. You can always add a bit of water just to get it going!

 

Good luck! Quince is one of my favorites 

[JeanneCake]

I'd go with equal weights of grated quince and water, simmer til it's soft then add the sugar and let it boil/reduce...

[curls]

Since you typically use Pamona's Pectin for your jam recipes, you can also use it for your quince jam. The jamming process will be much quicker. I don't know how the shorter cooking time will effect the flavor of the quince. Sounds like you have enough fruit to do some experiments.

 

https://pomonapectin.com/quince-jam/