North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[John Barbowski <jbarbowski@gmail.com>]

The discussion on Quince has prompted me to report on my experience this year. For the 1 ^st time ever, I have seen quince pears for sale in 2 of our local supermarkets. They were smaller than baseballs, slightly yellow and hard. What I really noticed was the price - $1.95 and $1.65 Cdn each!

 

We have a quince shrub in our yard, progeny of a neighbour's 10 foot plant. It has nice pink blossoms in the spring. Over the last few year's, it has sporadically borne the odd pear. In spite of reading about the benefits of the fruit on 'the list', we did nothing with them. This year, there were at least 20 fruits; add that to another 20+ from our neighbour's and it appeared we had a bumper crop. They were not as nicely formed as the commercially available fruit, but very similar. Some were starting to turn yellow – this was about the middle of Oct.

 

The fruits were transformed into a marmalade and into a quince sauce. The marmalade was sweet and tarty (if that is possible) that seemed to burst with flavor when tasted. The sauce tasted like rich apple sauce that was boiled down to intensify the flavor. My wife believes it will be ideal as a filling for Christmas baking. The marmelade recipe was from: http://cres.anu.edu.au/~mccomas/quincerecipes.html. The sauce recipe is from an English aquantance; it's quite old. Please contact me off list if you wish the recipe.

 

My shrubs are similar to the one id'd on the following site. I don't know which species.

 

 http://www.itmonline.org/arts/chaenomeles.htm

 

jb