Towards the end of last year I subscribed to Dr Christopher Monk’s Monk’s Modern Medieval Cuisine channel on YouTube. In his latest video Christopher makes an old recipe called ‘connate’ from the late fourteenth century roll of recipes The Forme of Cury.
Connate is a quince confection with a slightly surprising sceond ingredient. No spoilers, you’ll have to watch the video to find out. There are more details in the accompanying blog post as well.
Christopher then goes on to host a ‘quince off’ with three friends, in which they taste and compare quince jelly, quince cheese a.k.a. membrillo, and the connate. Good fun is had by all, and the results are very interesting, definitely enough to make me want to try making a batch of connate myself next quince season.
Well worth a watch if you’re interested in quinces – especially if you have a few left over from autumn and are looking for new recipe ideas – or historical cookery in general:
Thanks for the shout out. Much appreciated. I have now produced a modified and improved recipe should anyone be interested (available via my Buy Me A Coffee Page but if you or any of your subscribers/readers want a freebie copy, just contact me via my website and I’ll send you/them the recipe. I’ve really enjoyed cooking with quinces and certainly hope to do some more experimentation. I’m only up the road a few miles from your allotment so maybe we can meet up some time. Take care and thanks again.
Hi Chris – Thank you very much indeed for stopping by and thank you as well for the updated recipe offer, much appreciated. The only quince recipe I’ve tried myself so far is quince jelly, and that using Chaenomeles japonica (the ‘bush quince’, much smaller fruit) rather than full-size Cydonia oblonga (the tree quince), but connate is definitely on my list for next year. Cheers!