They call me the Queen of Quince.

That sounds a bit Seussical, but it is God’s truth.

I cannot pass a quince tree with indifference or treat it with insouciance, nor can I waste even a single slice of its fruit. My friends and acquaintances know of my obsession, and every October they pick their trees bare, passing on the fruit to me. Right before this past Halloween, my daughter’s old daycare provider cleaned off her quince tree and gave me a call. As a rule, I think that when someone offers me fruit from their trees, the least I can do is pick the produce myself, but she and her husband, a Navy veteran, had already done an outstanding job of packing the bulbous yellow fruits gently into 6 boxes. I didn’t have to pick a single one. When the call came in, I dropped everything and made haste to Forest Grove, where I gathered my treasure, all one hundred fifty pounds of it, and packed it into my trunk. As I drove home, my car filled with a heavenly aroma.

You may wonder, Dear Reader, what is a quince and what does it look like, and what on earth can one do with a hundred fifty pounds of them, besides compost them?

Quinces resemble a large, bumpy, hard pear. They can’t be eaten raw. The best known quince product is probably jelly, and one of the outstanding things about the quince, besides its divine perfume and long shelf life, is that it contains pectin, which means that you don’t have to add any commercial pectin to your sugary, jammy creations. Another delicious quince product is Membrillo, a sort of thick paste that can be cut up into squares and eaten as candy, or sliced and eaten with cheese, such as manchego, as it is eaten in some South American countries (in South America one can also find a membrillo made from guavas, another delectable fruit). And here’s the best thing of all – you can make both membrillo and jelly out of the same pot of quinces! Waste not want not!

Here are the recipes that I’ve used for jelly and membrillo:

First, thoroughly scrub the fuzz off the fruits, and then peel them and cut out the cores. (Save some peels and cores, and put these in a little cheesecloth bag.) Chop them into one-inch chunks. Fill a big pot with these chunks and add some water, to BARELY cover them. Boil them for at least a half hour, to release the juice. The fruit should turn orange-pink color. Now turn off the heat and let the cooked fruit cool. When the mixture is cool enough to handle, line a big sieve with cheesecloth and set it over a bowl or a 2-quart pyrex measuring cup, to catch the juice. You will need this juice for the jelly. Filter the pulpy mass and measure the juice. Now it’s time to put this juice back into a pot, with a slightly larger measure of white sugar and the little bag of peels (they contain a lot of pectin). I used about 5.5 cups sugar for 5 cups quince. I’ve read that the usual proportion is 1 kg of sugar per liter of juice. Turn on the heat and cook, stirring almost constantly. This mixture should turn a ruby color, as it reaches 225 degrees celsius (this happens as the water boils off, and the sugar and pectin become more concentrated and do their magic). You can now dip a spoon into the pot and catch a small amount. Put this in the freezer and check in a minute or two to see if it’s reached the “jelly” stage. If it has indeed begun to gel, it’s time to remove the bag of peels and spoon the jelly into sterile jars and, after cleaning the rims and covering the jars, can it in a water bath canner for 20 minutes. Voilà!

And then we come to the second part, the Membrillo. To make this, after blending the pulp well with a stick blender or food processor, measure out the goop and pour into a big pot. Stir in and equal volume of sugar.  If you want the water to cook out faster, use a wide pot, but if you want to avoid spattering, use a tall pot. Cook the pink goop, stirring constantly, for at least an hour. I have sometimes had to cook it for two hours! Bring a stool and some music! It must get very thick. You should be able to run the spoon across the bottom and see the bottom of the pot; and the pulp should not close quickly over the gap left by the spoon. I call this The Parting of the Pink Sea. Once you deem it thick enough, spread this sticky mass in an oiled, rimmed jelly roll pan, no more than an inch thick. Let this cool for at least a day. It should be almost rubbery. Now you can cut strips or squares. These lovelies will keep in the refrigerator for at least a year!

Now I must confess that when you have as many quinces as I usually do, you have to get creative, unless you plan on starting a business as a jelly and membrillo seller. One low-hanging fruit is quince sauce. This is much easier to make than either jelly or membrillo; it’s just like applesauce. Just peel and core your quinces, chop into chunks, and cook in a big pot with barely enough water to cover. Cook until the mixture turns a salmon/pink color. You can add cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, or any other favorite spices. I sometimes add orange blossom water or rose water at the end. Cool this mix a little bit, and blend with the stick blender. Add some lemon juice and sugar to taste, spoon into sterilized jars and can for 25 minutes in the water bath canner.

Jam is also very easy. I cook my peeled quinces with some water, just as I would with my jelly recipe. Once it’s turned very pink, I mash it all up. It doesn’t need to be pureed as finely as for sauce or membrillo. Then I add a satchel of peels and cores, ground cardamom and cinnamon and cloves, and sugar to taste (I use less sugar than I do with jelly.) Once it starts to thicken well, I remove the satchel of peels.  I pour it in the sterilized jars and can it for 25 minutes.

The good news is that after making all the recipes I just listed, I now had 20 jars of jelly, a gallon of membrillo, 35 jars of quince jam, and some 20 pints of sauce in my pantry. The bad news is that I still had seventy five pounds of quinces left. Undaunted, I began a search for recipes. My friend Laura Migliori gave me her outstanding recipe for quince compote, which can be used in a pie with plums and brandy, and a walnut crust. It can also be used on its own, like a chutney, accompanying a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Laura got her recipe from Deborah Madison’s book “The Savory Way”, revising it and making it her own. I encourage you to experiment with this compote, and find many ways to use it.

Here’s Laura’s recipe for Quince Compote:

Ingredients – 6 pounds of quinces, 1.5 quarts water, 1 cup sugar, 2 cinnamon sticks, 12 whole cloves, ½ teaspoon cardamom seeds, 4 strips of orange zest.

Simmer all the ingredients for about a half hour (perhaps even less), until quinces turn pink but are still intact. Can in a water bath for 25 minutes. I make this in pint jars, so that I have a correct measure for making a pie.

To make the pie: 

First make the walnut crust. In a food processor, grind up ¾ cup walnuts with 1.5 cups flour (add gradually), a pinch of salt,  and 2 Tbsp sugar. Add a half cup of cold butter, cut up into pea-sized lumps. In a small bowl, whisk an egg with a half tsp vanilla and 2 Tbsp water. Pulse as you add this liquid to the processor. On the counter, press this mass into a ball, cut it in two, then make each half ball into a chubby disk. Wrap the disks and chill for at least an hour. This can be done the day before you bake the pie.

Pie filling: 1 pint quince compote, 1 cup roughly chopped pitted (dried) prunes, 1 cup golden raisins, ⅓ cup sugar, 2 Tbsp brandy, 1 Tbsp orange blossom water, 1 tsp grated orange zest. 

Preheat the oven to 375F. Roll out one chilled disk, place in a 9-inch pie pan, and spoon in the filling; roll out the top crust and put it on top of the filling. Seal the crusts together, cut slits in the top crust, and bake for 35-45 minutes, until the crust is browned. 

Note: if your dried prunes are very dry, pour some boiling water or hot tea over them and let soak a bit, until they plump up. Drain and use.

After making numerous batches of compote, I had twenty eight pints of quince compote. That’s a lot of pies! And I still had a case of quinces. Now I was getting desperate. My friend Sue Jensen sent me a recipe for dried quinces, and it is delicious. One can’t just slice them up and toss them in the food dehydrator, for they are not sweet. You have to wash them very well, because they will retain their golden hide. Core them and slice them about a quarter inch thick. Put them in a big bowl and cover with sugar. Mix them up with the sugar, so they all get coated in it, and cover the bowl with a cloth to keep bugs or cats out. Leave this out for 48 hours, checking it now and then and stirring it up. When the 48 hours are up, the sugar will have mixed with the fruit juices and become a syrup. Put the quince slices in the dehydrator and and run it at about 110 degrees, until the fruit seems suitable dry.  I cooked my syrup down a bit, and I will freeze it for future use.

Phew! I’m done processing quince for the year. I still have about 25 quinces in my downstairs fridge, and I’ll use them here and there in a stew. I’ve done enough canning. In my mind, I group the quince together with such fruits as persimmons and medlars (a fruit popular in medieval Europe and still popular in Persian cooking) – redolent of pineapple or guava or cardamom, calling to mind  the Middle Ages or Central Asia, times and places far away. I have a small persimmon tree, a medlar tree, and some seeds for the American Persimmon. My medlar tree is grafted onto quince rootstock, that noble quince again! This year I got my first small harvest of medlars. I learned how to blett them, which means storing them away in the basement, as one would do with a hachiya persimmon, and some of them did indeed get very soft. They reminded me a bit of persimmon, though they had large seeds. I believe that the drought we had this summer caused the fruit to be smaller than it would otherwise have become. The harvest was too small to do a lot with, except make a quart of medlar brandy. I’ll make a report when it’s ready.

At this point, you may be wondering why I’m so interested in unusual and ancient fruits, since they are usually more difficult to process than more modern fruits like the pear, the plum, and the apple. I find such fruits challenging; I enjoy the hunt for delicious recipes. Most of all, I am committed to promoting biodiversity on my land. It’s important to save these species. The pollinators love them, and I say, the larger the variety of food for pollinators the better. In permaculture, we talk of many elements performing one function, while each element performs many functions in the forest garden system. In redundancy lies stability. Another aspect to consider is that some of the older species of plants are closer to their wild ancestors, and wild plants tend to be more resilient than their tamer relatives. Think of “weeds” like St John’s Wort. The wild variety pops up on disturbed, poor land, and it needs almost no water. It also has many medicinal uses. The ornamental version has little medicinal use, and it’s not as tough as its wild cousin. I’ve never found a worm inside a persimmon, a medlar, or a quince. And finally, I believe that we’re entering some hard times. Our planet is in trouble. If I can forage oddball fruits and store a lot of food, perhaps I will decrease my dependence on commercial agriculture. I realize that the sugar I use for my quince products comes from some big commercial (organic) sugar farm, and I have quite a distance to travel on my journey toward sustainability. I plan to try out making more things with honey next year, or with apple juice. I hope I can lower my footprint on Earth and help heal my little plot of land, one quince at a time.