If you have ever tried membrillo — the dense Spanish jam often paired with Manchego on a nice cheese plate, maybe with a handful of Marcona almonds and a glass of Tempranillo – you know the sweet, slightly floral flavor of quince. Its appearance, however, may remain a mystery. The pink hue and uniform slices of quince paste look nothing like the golden, lumpy fruit as it hangs on a tree during the autumn harvest season.
At a glance, quince could be mistaken for an heirloom apple or pear, but hold one in your hand and you’ll soon understand a key difference between them – this rock hard fruit cannot be eaten raw. With a little heat and a little patience, though, quince can star in a surprisingly diverse array of sweet and savory dishes.
In the U.S., you can only find fresh quince at a handful of specialty grocery stores and farmers markets from October through the winter months. It is much more common throughout Europe, where it’s made into homemade quince pastes – cotognata in Italy, pâte de coing in France, marmelada in Portugal, and kydoni in Greece. The fruit trees have a long history in the Mediterranean, but likely originated in Iran and Turkey, then spread throughout the Middle East. According to Franco-Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan, “it is a fruit that is present a lot in Palestine.”
When I first spoke with him, Kattan had just made three pots of jam using quince harvested from his small backyard tree in Bethlehem, with the intention of buying more to make enough jam to last until the next season.
“At a very young age, my maternal grandmother, Julia, would do an exquisite safarjal [quince] jam and I would be allowed to taste it as soon as she started taking a spoonful out of the pot to check consistency,” Kattan says. His recipe is adapted from hers and features in his cookbook, Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food (published this May).
These days he carries on the tradition with his mother. “Making jams with my mother is always great fun as we keep having different opinions on the quantity of sugar, on adding a certain herb or on the consistency of the jam, with small coffee plates full of jam going in and out of freezers.”
Kattan loves having the jam “on warm bread, preferably kmaj or maybe on a taboun,” he adds. “I also like it served next to a fukhara of three meats. Fukhara is a traditional slow-cooked dish in Palestine, usually done with lamb, carrots, onions, potatoes, courgettes. At Fawda [his cafe and restaurant in Bethlehem], I used to do a vegetable fukhara and a meat fukhara, which would have lamb, beef and pork. The quince jam goes very well with those slow-roasted meats.”
The chef similarly recommends preparing lamb stew with quince, noting that the fruit also makes a great side dish roasted in wedges and sprinkled with za’atar leaves.
While Kattan was raised with a close connection to quince, baker Benjamina Ebuehi first encountered it as an adult living in London. “It was served on the dessert menu in a frangipane tart,” Ebuehi says. “I remember how fragrant it was. I was keen to find out more about this fruit.”
So began a long process of recipe development that eventually led to the poached quince and custard crumble cake that is featured in Ebuehi’s cookbook, I’ll Bring Dessert: Simple, Sweet Recipes for Every Occasion, published this past April.
“I was inspired by the very British dessert, apple crumble and custard,” Ebuehi says, noting that she ultimately settled on using quince over apples or pears – which can often be substituted for one another when baking or cooking – because of quince’s unique qualities. “It’s got a beautiful sweet, floral smell and when cooked has a rose-like, citrusy flavor with a little bit of tartness.
“I know it’s not a super popular or widely used fruit, but it felt special enough to include and I hoped it would provide an opportunity for people to explore it,” Ebuehi adds.
The recipe’s instructions purposely produce more poached quince than is needed for the cake because Ebuehi likes to have some left over. “I’d typically use the extra poached quince for breakfast and eat it with yogurt and granola,” she says. “Or if I wanted to use some for a different, easy dessert, I’ll serve the quince with some of the poaching liquids, shortbread, and a dollop of clotted cream.”
To poach quince, it should first be washed, peeled, and cut into quarters, then placed in a pot of boiling water, along with sugar, as well as the zest and juice of a lemon. Ebuehi recommends adding spices like cardamom pods and star anise. After the fruit has cooked for an hour or so, the poaching liquids can be saved to drizzle over desserts or used in place of simple syrup in homemade sodas or cocktails.
It is only through this process that the naturally astringent taste of the fruit – the result of its high concentration of tannins – and its firm flesh become sweet and soft. Heat has another interesting and more unexpected effect on quince. In its raw state, the fruit’s interior is white, but as it cooks, it turns pink. This is a result of natural pigments called anthocyanins.
It is for this reason that Kattan, who also makes pâte de fruits and tarte tatin with quince, calls it a magic fruit.
“The transformation of the color, the scents that emanate from the pot as it cooks – enchanting!” Kattan says, as though the pleasure of eating quince comes second to the delight of cooking it.
Elena Valeriote is a writer of stories about food, farming, culture, and travel that explore the connection between people and place. Her work has appeared in publications including Gastro Obscura, Modern Farmer, and Life & Thyme.
