Quinces

We had a quince tree in the garden of the house I grew up in. The fruits that hung from its branches were small and hard, their flesh astringent; we’d dare each other to take a bite and then, our mouths puckering, hurl the rest in fruit warfare. “Benjamin, do not throw fruit at your sisters,” Mum might shout from the kitchen door, when the real culprit and fast bowler was my younger sister Rosie. Occasionally, Mum had a bowl of quinces from the tree on the kitchen table, which I thought looked nearly as odd as the ornamental pumpkins she also liked. Odd, but I did recognize that they smelled beautiful. Now, years later, in my Roman kitchen at the right time of year, I sometimes have a bowl of quinces on the table, and Luca, as if to take me down a peg or two, tries to take a bite, says blurgh, and hurls the fruit across the kitchen.

The quince is an ancient fruit, part of the rose family and cousin to the apple and pear, which accounts for its unmistakable scent: apple, pear, rose, musky honey, and a dash of something exotic. It is odd-looking, bulbous, and could be the love child, conceived during a night of passion at the back of a fruit crate, of a knobby yellow pear and an underripe cooking apple. Quinces are covered in a downy brown coat, and their hard, astringent raw flesh gives little clue as to the delights in store when they are cooked with sugar or honey.

Quinces were beloved by the ancient Romans, and were also used in English medieval and Italian Renaissance cooking. The food historian Gillian Riley notes some wonderful-sounding dishes in her companion to Italian food, such as roasted duck with quince cooked in sweet wine; a sauce of quince with spices and bitter orange for serving with meat; a minestra of quince cooked in broth, thickened with cheese and egg. Jane Grigson, too, has a whole section on quinces in her book about traditional English food. These days, quinces have become rather rare and unfamiliar, particularly in England. They’re less so in Italy, where they are still used to make compotes, jams, clear jellies, and a firm jelly called cotognata. They’re not the easiest fruit; they require a bit of attention and a keen hand to deal with the hard flesh. Like me on a Monday morning, quinces need sweetening up; a patient simmer, a slow bake or poach, to bring out the best in them and transform them into something delicious.

Cotogne in composta

Spiced quinces in syrup

Quinces poach beautifully, becoming tender and succulent while resolutely holding their shape and pleasing grainy texture. They taste like buttery poached apples, fragrant pears, sweet honeyed wine, and something sharp and tropical all at the same time. Poaching also changes their color from honey yellow to anything from peach to—if you’re lucky—an extraordinary deep red. The addition of lemon, cloves, and pepper lends a soft, spicy warmth. Poached quinces are delicious with thick cream or Italian mascarpone; and they make a good breakfast with yogurt and muesli. They also have an affinity with cheese, particularly Parmesan, and cold meat such as boiled bacon, chicken, or turkey, acting rather like a spiced fruit chutney.

serves 6

2¼ pounds quinces

zest of 1 organic lemon

1¼ cups granulated sugar

6 cloves

6 black peppercorns

⅞ cup white wine

Wash, peel, core, and cut the quinces into eighths. Using a peeler, pare away the lemon zest. Put the quince pieces, along with the cores and lemon zest, in a large, heavy-bottomed pan along with all the other ingredients and 2 cups (500 ml) cold water.

Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about an hour, or until the quinces are tender. Lift the quince pieces into a serving dish with a slotted spoon, then continue simmering to reduce the syrup until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Strain it through a sieve and pour it over the quince pieces. Serve warm.

Cooking fruit

If the quince tree provided ammunition, the large Bramley apple tree, with its branches spread wide, provided a place from which to fire it at the unsuspecting enemy emerging from the house. There were also a pair of smaller apple trees, a huge old crabapple, and rhubarb in the vegetable patch in the garden of the house I grew up in. It may have been a piddling orchard but it provided plenty of fruit, most of which needing cooking into submission. Consequently we ate a lot of poached, stewed, and baked fruit. My brother and sister protested, but I rarely did. My absolute favorites were apples stuffed with butter and raisins and baked until they burst into a juicy fluff, or rhubarb poached with just enough sugar to soften the sharpness but not enough to completely mask it, served warm with cold cream. There were pies and crumbles too, of course, which nobody complained about, but fruit cooked until tender and served with custard or cream was what I liked best. It still is.

Bramley apples and rhubarb may be hard to come by in Rome, which I don’t mind (they’re good things to be missed and looked forward to when I go back to England), but there’s plenty of other fruit to be baked and poached, most notably in our kitchen apricots in spiced syrup, peaches baked with butter and almond, and pears with Marsala and cinnamon.

Poached apricots in spiced syrup

Some years ago my best friend threw a spoonful of crème fraîche in my face. Although not planned, it was inevitable. Romla tells the story well: the restaurant near Villefranche-sur-Mer, the chicken roasted in a wood oven, the jars of poached apricots in syrup, the pail of crème fraîche, the ex-boyfriend, the throw. So here we were, coming to the end of a long meal that had involved plenty of wine, and there they were, the clip-topped jars of poached fruit, and beside them the pail of white and a large spoon. Our eyes locked, in much the same way they had locked just before Romla had had to slap my face repeatedly during an earnest scene of overacting at drama school. Her eyes narrowed. The blob landed just short of my left eye and sent a little snowstorm across my head. Everyone at the table looked shocked, and we laughed for the next two days.

The apricots may have been overshadowed by the slapstick, but they were a good enough food memory to be filed away. The memory was nudged years later by a recipe that caught my eye and a pile of pale orange apricots blushed with pink at the market. After quinces, apricots are my favorite fruit for poaching in syrup because their texture changes, becoming somehow tighter and plumper but always tender. The scrolls of cinnamon bark lend warm spice, the pepper heat, the lemon a sharp edge, and the cloves some spicy intrigue. Although good right away, poached apricots are infinitely better after a few days spent wallowing in their spicy syrup. I like them for dessert with crème fraîche (throwing is optional). I also like them for breakfast with Greek yogurt or ricotta and some toasted hazelnuts that have been broken into bits. This is not real preserving, so the jar should be kept in the fridge, but will do so happily for a couple of weeks.

makes 1 quart

20 ripe-but-firm apricots

1 vanilla pod

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons superfine sugar

7 thick strips organic lemon zest (you’ll need 2 or 3 lemons)

2 cinnamon sticks

4 cloves

6 black peppercorns

Rinse and cut the apricots in half and remove the stones. Split the vanilla pod in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds from the pod with the tip of a sharp knife. Put them in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan with the empty pod, 1 quart filtered water, the sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon, cloves, and peppercorns. Gently bring to a boil and cook, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved.

Now you are going to cook the apricots in two or three batches, depending on the size of your pan. Add the first batch and simmer, stirring once or twice, for 2–6 minutes, or until tender. The length of time will depend on the ripeness of the fruit. Using a slotted spoon, lift the apricots out of the syrup and into some very clean canning jars. Put the next batch in the syrup, poach in the same way, and lift into the jars. Repeat, if necessary, with a final batch.

Next, scoop out the lemon, peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon and divide them between the jars. Bring the syrup to a fast-rolling boil and leave it boiling energetically until it has reduced by about one-third. Divide the syrup between the jars.

Seal and store the jars for a few days in the fridge before serving the apricots cold or at room temperature with a dollop of crème fraîche, mascarpone, or thick Greek yogurt.