Goiabada (Guava Paste Firm Enough to Slice)

Variations

• Cascão: part of the purée is left unsieved in small pieces for texture. It sets a little less firmly.
• Goiabada cremosa: stopped earlier, at the spoonable stage, and kept in a jar for spreading. The same thing, short of the slicing point.
• Romeo and Juliet: goiabada layered with Minas cheese. Sweet against salt, firm against soft, in one bite.
• Bolo de rolo: Pernambuco's roll cake, many very thin sheets of sponge rolled up with melted goiabada spread between them.
• Marmelada: what goiabada stood in for, quince paste. Made the same way.

Tips

• What sets it is the guava itself. No gelatine and no agar go in. Guava, like the quince this paste replaced, is rich in pectin, and once enough of its water is driven off with the sugar it sets on its own. It is the point Linzer torte makes about jam: "Half the reason redcurrant and raspberry are traditional is that they are high in pectin and set firm."
• In a bean, the same pectin does the opposite job. Braising warns that "Acid sets pectin firm", so a bean simmered with it never softens, and chili con carne and red red order their beans around that rule. There the pectin is inside a cell wall, and setting it stops a vegetable going soft. In goiabada the flesh is blended and sieved so the pectin is spread through the whole purée, and then it is set. The same substance, building rather than blocking.
• It is a jam taken as far as slicing. Pineapple cake sorts stiff fillings — "they differ in what makes the filling stiff — caramel, high-pectin jam, and here a vegetable cooked dry." All three sit inside pastry and borrow its shape. Goiabada takes the jam branch further, until it stands up without pastry and is cut with a knife.
• Judge it by the bottom of the pan, not the clock. Guavas differ in water and pectin, so it may take forty minutes or sixty. If the line from the spoon closes straight away, keep going. Stopped short, it slumps out of the mould; taken too far, it goes past firm to crumbly.
• It is not held the way a dried fruit is. Tklapi spreads its purée thin and dries it in the sun. Goiabada sets while still holding its water, which is why a cut face shines and why it has to be kept covered or the outside dries.
• Why the stirring never stops: the thicker it gets, the less the heat at the bottom can move upward, and the moment you stop, the bottom catches. A scorched note spreads through the whole batch.