Ingredient

Quince

A quince looks like a knobbly, golden, oversized pear and smells extraordinary — a whole one will perfume a room. Raw it is hard, astringent and genuinely unpleasant. Cooked slowly with sugar it turns soft, deep pink and intensely fragrant, and it is one of the great preserving fruits.

Why it goes pink

Raw quince flesh is pale cream. Cooked long and slowly, it turns amber, then rose, then a deep ruby. The colour comes from tannins in the fruit reacting and polymerising under prolonged gentle heat — the same broad family of reactions that darkens tea and reddens some long-cooked apples.

Speed is the enemy of colour. A quince boiled hard for twenty minutes goes beige; the same fruit simmered for two hours goes red. If the colour matters, give it time.

The aroma is the other reason to bother. It is floral, honeyed and faintly tropical, and it survives cooking better than almost any other fruit fragrance.

Preparing one

They are extremely hard and this is the part people give up at.

1. Rub off the grey down on the skin with a cloth. It is natural and harmless but unpleasant in the pot.
2. Use a heavy, sharp knife and a stable board. Quinces are dense and blunt knives slip.
3. Quarter it first, then core it. Coring a whole quince is unnecessarily difficult.
4. Keep the peel and core. They are extremely high in pectin and go into the pan tied in muslin.
5. Drop the cut pieces into acidulated water. Quince browns quickly once cut.
6. Simmer gently — not boil — with sugar and water for at least an hour, longer if you want the deep colour.

What to make

• Membrillo, the Spanish quince paste, set firm and sliced to eat with manchego. The single best-known use and worth the long cooking.
• Quince jelly, clear and rose-coloured, which sets with no help at all.
• Poached quince in a light syrup with a vanilla pod, served with cream or yoghurt.
• A few slices in an apple pie or crumble, which is the easiest way to use one and transforms the whole dish.
• With lamb or pork, particularly in Iranian and Turkish stews where quince is a standard partner for meat.
• Quince in the roasting tin under a bird, where it softens in the fat.
• Quince vodka or gin, grated raw into spirit with sugar.

Buying and keeping

Ripeness

Fully yellow with no green. A green quince has less aroma and less colour to give. They ripen slowly at room temperature.

The down

A grey fuzz on the skin is natural on many varieties and rubs off. Not a mould.

Keeping

They store for weeks in a cool place and go on perfuming the room while they do it. Keep them away from other food, which will pick up the smell.

Pectin

Very high, especially in peel and core. Quince will set almost anything, and is a useful addition to a jam that will not.

Japonica quince

The ornamental garden shrub produces small, hard, very aromatic fruit which can be used the same way. Smaller yield, same result.

Common questions