Quinces have become uncommon, at least in my corner of the world, but they are an ancient fruit. It seems their last wave of popularity was in the late nineteenth century – there are old quince trees planted on farms in this area, and the quinces from those trees can sometimes be found at farmers’ markets. The first time I bought some, the farmer in question told me he didn’t usually pick them, just let them fall and rot. Thanks to my enthusiasm, he picked about half a bushel each year and brought them to the market. I bought a lot of them. 🙂

Three years ago, I planted my own quince tree. It’s a Quince de Portugal and is self-pollinating. I also planted a second quince – one taken from an old tree of unknown variety – so they can encourage each other. The first one bloomed this year and bore twelve quinces. The other one has yet to bloom.

The flowers are really pretty.

Here’s the fruit forming. This was taken in July.

I wasn’t sure when to pick the quinces. I ended up picking them in September, since the squirrels were getting busy in the garden and I didn’t want them to steal any.

They sat in a bowl in the kitchen for a few weeks, slowly ripening, and eventually I washed off the fuzz to make them look more respectable.

Finally I made quince jelly. To make jelly of any kind, you first have to make the juice. I don’t peel or core the quinces, since they’re quite hard. I take off the stem, half them, then chop each half into eight pieces or so. It all goes into the pot. I cover them with water and bring them to a boil, then turn the juice down to a simmer.

This time, I simmered the quinces for about three hours. The magical thing about quinces is that the colour of the juice changes with heat – so as it simmers, it turns pink. After about two hours, I mashed the fruit and topped up the water. It was in this last hour that it turned such a vivid pink. It also began to gel.

Next, I let the mixture cool. I lined a collander with a cloth and strained it through. I ended up with this jug and half of another one.

When I first made quince jelly, the recipes suggested sugar and juice be one-to-one. I found that jelly just tasted like sugar. This time, I found suggestions of .8 of sugar to every 1 of juice. I might try even less sugar next time, as it’s still pretty sweet – and I don’t think there’s any risk of it not setting up.

My yield was six jars of beautiful jelly. This is an older picture, because we’ve been eating up this batch.

Some fruit trees bear heavily in alternate years. Was this a low year or a high year? Will there be one quince next year or dozens? I’m curious to find out.

This also got me to thinking about medieval quinces. If you search for quince recipes now, the majority of them are for jelly. You might also find recipes for membrillo, which is quince paste. Both use a fair bit of sugar – but medieval people (and certainly ancient Greek people) didn’t have the same access to cane sugar that we do. How did they eat their quinces?

In The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, I found a recipe for Cotignac or Quince Jelly Candies. The source is Le Ménagier de Paris – I had also looked there, but this recipe isn’t included in my English translation of the work (The Good Wife’s Guide). There is nothing about quinces in Pleyn Delit either. I suspect these omissions are because quinces are less common in our times – it makes sense to include recipes people can or will actually make.

This is from page 215 to 16 of The Medieval Kitchen – the recipe itself is from Le Menagier de Paris:

“To make cotignan, take quinces and peel them, then cut them into quarters and remove the core and seeds, then cook them in good red wine and then put them through a sieve; then take some honey and boil it for a long time, and skim it; then put in your quinces and stir very well, boil long enough that the honey reduces by at least a half, then add hypocras powder and stir until it is completely cold; then cut into pieces and store.”

“This is one of the first French recipes for these quince jellies, which, as pâte de coings, would later be a specialty of the town of Orléans. Hee they are made with honey, like all the “preserves and sweets” described in Le Ménagier de Paris – and this is further evidence of the bourgeois origins of that text: its author would never have dreamed of using that precious commodity, sugar. He saves it for rather fancier purposes, such as “the Duke’s Powder”, a sweetened spice mixture. Still, this recipe is not without interest, for cooking the fruit in red wine rather than in water adds a fine color and a slightly acidic, winey flavor, which balances the sweetness of the quinces and the musky undertone of the honey.

The name cotignac is related to the words for “quince”: condougn in Provençal and mela cotogna in Italian. Etymologists tell us that this refers to the city of Cydonia (now Canae) in Crete, whose Latin name was Cotonea. In his first-century A.D. Natural History, Pliny the Elder refers to Cotonea in connection with the quince trade.”

There’s a modern version of the recipe after this, and I will try it the next time I have quinces. I’ll have to make my own hypocras, which is fun, too.