Quintessential Quinces

Autumn is officially here with the March Equinox having arrived on Saturday 21  March. The quinces are ripening and I picked a bowl of the rich yellow fruit for the kitchen. They filled the house with their deep sweet aroma and I could smell the history of a hundred Eastern kitchens.

 

Quince Harvest

I cannot imagine a historical garden without a quince tree or hedge in it. There was no doubt in my mind that our garden should have a quince hedge. I love the nostalgic memory of quinces. When I stand under the tree with the first ripe quince pressed against my nose it brings with it the melancholic sent of autumn.

I remember how as a boy I would take a fork and prick the yellow fruit to cover it with tiny holes before I soak it in saltwater. The fruit will have this sour taste with a salty edge. The pips covered with their own jelly was just another surprise of this unique fruit.

 

Lamb stews are magical with quinces and the fruit baked whole in the oven and served with custard as a desert is delicious. The quince is so versatile and can be used as sambal with curries or just preserved in a sugar and cinnamon syrup for a quick desert on a balmy autumn day.

The recipe I decided on was a quince chutney and the mixture of spices and this rich fruit cooking away on the stove filled the kitchen with aromas of times gone by.
 

Quince Chutney in the Making

An interesting bit of history I found about the quince in South Africa is linked to Murraysburg that was founded in 1856 on the farm “Eenzaamheid’ in the Karoo and then became a municipality in July 1883. An original condition for the purchase of any residential plot in Murraysburg was that the plot needed to be surrounded by a quince hedge. This unexplained rule meant that Murraysburg once had the largest quantity of quince hedging in the world.*

Quince Chutney

This antique fruit completes the historical landscape of the garden.

 

 

*Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murraysburg