This morning in the garden was all about the quince harvest. I’m feeling very lucky to have such a wonderful fruit tree at the bottom of the garden. It produced beautiful pink blossom through the spring, and now offers these lovely golden fruits.
The boughs of the quince tree are heavy with fruit, and I’ve harvested a couple of dozen so far.
There’s more quince here than I know what to do with. I’m not complaining at all, just noting that I need to think of plans for quince!
Quince is often mentioned in Edward Lear’s nonsense poetry, I remember reading about it as a child and wondering what this funny sounding fruit was like.
It’s well known that the Owl and the pussy cat enjoyed quince.
I considered making mince and quince for our tea tonight, but it sounds weird and horrible so I’m not sure I’ll risk it. It’s probably not the best idea to base a recipe on whimsical poetry, and we don’t even have a runcible spoon.
Anyone got any good quince recipe recommendations?
Jen x
Doing The Plan 
I was just about to ask if you had any good recipes. Well, at least you are still growing the fruit. I have two trees (in two different gardens) that are copies of a tree I got fruit from when I was a kid. I really love the trees and the fruit, but I can not give much of the fruit away. No one else likes it. The lady that grew the original tree would cut the big fruit in half, scoop out the seed and core (which is not a simple job with such a hard fruit), drop in a big spoonful of sugar, sprinkle on some cinnamon, and then bake them like apple pies, without a tin! They are smaller than pot pies, but us kids likes them. She also make apple sauce with them. It smelled great, but was sort of starchy. I use quince primarily to get pectin from, so the fruit unfortunately gets wasted. It does not change the flavor of the fruit it gets added to quite as much as crabapple or apple peels and cores do. (I sometimes get the condensed juice this time of year, and then can it for next year when plums and apricots ripen and get cooked into jam.) With some spices, it makes a great jelly alone, but I always get help with that because I am not proficient with putting flavors together or cooking. Because they are SO hard, it takes quite a bit of work to cook the juice out of them, and they really do not make much juice. it seems like such a waste of fruit. I have made really good and sharply flavored pickles with them, but I do not remember how I did it. I would guess that they would make an excellent conserve.
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