Readers React:A Quince Primer
A wise man defers to his betters; a lazy man just defers. This morning I'm going to let others tell the story of the quince, an unyielding but fragrant autumn fruit that's redolent of bygone agriculture. On the bush it looks like a particularly gnarly heirloom pear, and in the hand it's as hard as a July apple. A felt-like layer of fuzz gives the fruit an unpalatable appearance, but it exhales a delicious apple-pear fragrance that evokes ancient orchards along the Black Sea.
The quince is, in fact, kin to apples and pears, although it's more like a long-lost cousin than a member of the immediate family. I've had trouble finding them, and even many of the farmers I've asked don't know about this strange horticultural relic. (Nina Corbett, who runs the blog Put Up or Shut Up, gets them at the great Farmers Ranch Market in Van Nuys.) Their scarcity is a pity, since quince are really a jammer's best friend. The fruit is rich in pectin, and after long coaxing over gentle heat it unexpectedly reveals its softer nature: a lovely pink color and a wistful flavor that pairs well with other antique essences like cardamom, rose geranium and bay.
In the October 28 edition of the Los Angeles Times, an article by David Karp gives a thorough introduction to the quince and what he characterizes as its incipient revival. Karp writes:
Neglected for decades, the quince seems an improbable candidate for revival today, when consumers demand sweet, ready-to-eat fresh fruit. Why is it, then, that in recent years three books of quince recipes and lore have appeared, the fruit increasingly is featured at high-end restaurants, and half a dozen of these have even been named after it?
"The quince is the poster child of 'Slowness,' " suggests Ben Watson, an author and food activist who organized a tasting of quince varieties for Slow Food's Ark of Taste committee. "It's lovely and fragrant but pretty much inedible unless transformed by peeling, coring and cooking. I think it is poised for a comeback."
It certainly is a paradoxical fruit, both homely and voluptuous, like a large, knobbly, fuzzy pear. Raw it is typically so hard, sour and astringent that in Turkey, the world's largest producer, "to eat the quince" is slang meaning "to get into serious trouble."
Karp provides recipes for quince desserts, but he overlooks the fruit's canning applications. Luckily for you and me, two SAVING THE SEASON readers have stepped into the breach.
Tom Hudgens, an old friend of Greenvalley who has just finished his editing the manuscript of his first cookbook, sent me an email the other day under the subject heading QUINCE ON THE BRAIN. It's so full of good advice that I want to quote it at length:
The old, gnarly quince trees in our yard did well this year for some reason. I'd already raided an armload from my favorite windfall tree in San Anselmo, and from those I just made slices in syrup, lightly spiced with cinnamon sticks, a few cloves, and lemon zest. I cooked the cleaned "fillets" of quince in water and sugar to taste, along with the quince peels and flavorings. When the fillets were tender and pink, I strained out all the solids, picked out the fillets, sliced them and set them aside. Then I reduced the syrup, watched its color intensify, then finally added back the quince slices--they absorbed the concentrated syrup and pinkened further. Uncommonly good, over yogurt or vanilla ice cream.
So, with my TWO armloads of backyard quinces, I wanted to do something less laborious. I found an intriguingly simple-sounding recipe for cotignac, or quince paste, in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, where you first bake the quinces whole in a big covered dish until they're cooked through, then remove the cores, food-mill what remains, weigh the resulting puree and add its weight in sugar, then cook down until thoroughly candied and clear. I used a big round shallow china casserole, and the 300-degree oven, for the whole process—I've always turned to the oven for almost anything that needs to be cooked long-and-slow. I added probably only 3/4 of the sugar the recipe specified, and it was perfect. In the initial baking, I nestled a cinnamon stick, a couple of strips of lemon zest, and 2 thin slices of fresh ginger among the whole fruit. Once I obtained the puree and added the sugar, it was just a matter of taking the casserole out of the oven every 30 minutes or so and stirring, and again, watching the color deepen, this time to a deep, dark cornelian red. When I judged it to be done, I spread it over a wax-paper-lined sheet pan. After the first side hardened, flipped to expose the underside. It's still in the air-drying stage, but firm enough to slice cleanly and cut into shapes. It's just SO GOOD—deeply apple-y, dark-tasting, the subtlest whiff of the spices, and a strong rose background.
Luis Melendez still life with membrilloAnd then Willy Blackmore, an LA-based food writer who interviewed me for the hometown blog LAist.com, sent a line saying that he's made membrillo (the Spanish name for quince paste) flavored with bay leaves and thyme. "The bay and thyme give it a savory quality that would make it go very well with pork or roast chicken," he says.
Linda the Great, Linda Ziedrich, points out that quince also goes well with cardamom and suggests adding the crushed seeds from 7 cardamom pods (less that 1/4 teaspoon) to flavor 2 pounds of fruit for quince paste.
My own quince work thus far has been impeded by a real time crunch (the office, you know). I've just managed to do one batch of quince syrup, but thanks to Ziedrich's guidance it's one of my favorite sweet preserves of the entire year. She flavors quince jelly with a few stems of rose geranium, and by pure coincidence, the day I was processing my quince, neighbor Bill came over to invite me to help myself to the pot of rose geranium in his backyard. I of course leapt at the chance, and although I didn't have tiime to cook my quince into a jelly, the syrup is amazing. Unlike rose water with its suffocating scent of old ladies, rose geranium adds a delicate whiff of fresh rose petals. When I told Nina how excited I was about the results, she knew exactly what I was talking about. "You think you don't like rose," she said, "until you taste rose geranium."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
QUINCE SYRUP WITH ROSE GERANIUM
5 lbs quince
8 cups water
sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon
3" sprig of rose geranium—four to six leaves
1 Rinse quince and rub off fuzz. Quarter the fruits, cutting away the stem and calyx (blossom remnant) but do not peel or core. Cut quarters into smaller chunks of 1/2" to 3/4" inch.
2 Put sliced fruit in a kettle and add 8 cups water to barely cover. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for an hour or even more until the fruit is very soft and pinkish.
3 Strain off the liquid through a jelly bag or colander lined with cheesecloth. Measure, note the quantity and return to liquid to the cleaned kettle. (The pulp could be ground and cooked down for membrillo, but its flavor will definitely need to be doctored with aromatics and lemon juice.)
4 For every 1 cup extracted juice, measure 3/4 cup sugar. Add the sugar and juice of 1/2 lemon to the juice, bring to a boil and reduce heat to a medium boil. Cook for just a few minutes until the syrup has reduced enough to develop some body. (If you reduce it too far, you'll get jelly, and in fact you might want to do just that.) Turn off heat and swish the rose geranium through the hot liquid for 30 seconds. Discard the leaves and ladle syrup into jars. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
YIELD
5 lbs quince yielded 2.5 pints of syrup
10 x 4 oz
NOTES
This syrup is delicious stirred into yogurt or puddled under a dollop of creme fraiche as a simple dessert.
Reader Comments (5)
My grandmother's quince jelly was alway a pale rose color. Yet mine, which I have been making for several years here on the same land, is alway a ruby red. I do not use pectin and I cook mine for a while. Is it possible that her pale rose color came from cooking less and using pectin? Or am I missing something? I would like to achieve the same pale rose color.
Roger
Hi Roger --
thanks for your interesting comment. the color of quince jelly is largely dependent on the cooking time: the longer you cook quinces, the redder they get.
my guess as to the difference between your grandmother's jelly and your own is exactly the same as your guess: that she cooked it less. perhaps she added commercial pectin to make it set up quicker. but there is another option: perhaps she used more sugar that you do.
the chemistry of jelly: a firm set is achieved when pectin and sugar are sufficiently concentrated to cohere into a mass -- usually that means about 65% overall sugar.
so lets say your grandmother made her jelly by combining 1 cup extracted quince juice and 1 cup sugar. (we're supposing now that she did not use commercial pectin.) she's starting off with 50% overall sugar, and she'd need to cook the jelly a certain amount of time to boil off enough water to reach 65% concentration and achieve a jell set.
now, if your jelly recipe is 1 cup quince juice to 1/2 cup sugar, then you'll have to cook that liquid much longer to achieve a jell set. and the longer you cook quinces, the redder they become.
what's the ratio of juice to sugar you use for your jelly? i just made a batch with 4 cups extracted quince juice to 3 cups sugar -- and my jelly is a pretty rose pink.
and you know what? i'd actually like it to be a bit redder, so i might well use less sugar next time --
let me know your results if you do another batch of quinces --
stay in touch!
kevin west
Hi Kevin,
I have the exact opposite problem, I want my jelly to be ruby red but its very pale almost yellow colour. I think t might have something to do with the variety as well, because I cooked it an extremely long time, hoping for a deeper red and it just didn't happen.
Oh well, still tastes delicious!
Hey Whiskey Stones --
I had that happen last fall when I went up to Paso Robles to make jelly and membrillo with friends who have quince trees. I'd given them the whole song and dance about how quince darkens with cooking etc, and then we proceeded to cook the hell out of their quinces. the result looked about like apple jelly/apple sauce. good flavor but no color. must have something to do with the variety of quince as you say, but I don't know more than that --
best
k
Kevin, I absolutely love your website esp. this article on quince. I did a dinner party three yrs. ago featuring pork tenderloin and cubed quince with sweet potatoes. Finding the quince was the difficult part. Having never cooked with quince before, I had no idea how hard they would be to cut and peel. But the result was worth it.
I just found your blog after seeing your newly renovated living room in House Beautiful. Bet you are loving your 'new' room. Did you throw your party? vsa