The humble Quince
Quince are a hard, acidic fruit that kind of resemble an apple/pear that grows on a shrubby looking bush from Asia. Years ago quince were easy to find and quince jam or jelly was not an unusual sight on the table at afternoon tea time. These days however they aren’t as easy to find, so when I saw a local fruit stall had them I snapped them up because I have always wanted to try them.
I grabbed my Edmonds, turned to the jam/jelly section and discovered…no recipes using quince! Urgh. Quince just don’t seem to be cool anymore. *sighs*
You need a truck load of sugar
Being someone that doesn’t care what the cool kids are or are not into, I pulled out an older Edmonds circa 1984ish (the cover unfortunately is long gone so that’s a guesstimate) and found a recipe for quince conserve and one for quince honey. “That’ll do” I thought to myself – but which one to make? First I read through the ingredients thinking that would help me decide, only to discover that they both had the exact same ingredients in the exact same quantities. Very helpful. So my decision was going to be based on method.
Grated Quince
The conserve method required the whole fruit to be boiled until soft and then removing the skins from the fruit. I wasn’t keen on this idea because playing with hot fruit is me just begging to be burnt. The quince honey recipe just required the quince to be grated and added to boiling water and sugar. We have a winner! Quince honey it is.
Quince honey
The quince honey was to be boiled for twenty minutes then tested as you would jam and then sealed into hot jars. Too easy; but as is often the case, it was never really going to be that easy. I boiled the mixture for 20 minutes but the fruit was still a little firm and the liquid was very runny and looked like water. There was no way it was going to set in any way! To cut a long story short, I had to boil the mixture for an hour and a half to get it to a setting consistency. Perhaps the honey is meant to be runny like water with nothing but a sweet taste but I am pretty sure the idea is for it to taste like quince, seriously. I also know that quince when cooked turn the liquid pink, there was no pink happening so I decided, as I said to keep boiling it until the mixture was dark pink and a consistency that I knew would set properly.
The resulting quince honey is yummy! It has an almost rosy/turkish delight kind of flavour. Seriously, if this is what quince tastes like I have no idea why they aren’t everywhere. They are delicious.
So that’s my experience on Throwback Thursday with quince. The Edmonds may have decided they aren’t cool anymore but man, I can’t wait to get more and try some more recipes with them.
Until next time. Happy cooking! 🙂