green quinces

[eeky]

we have been given a carrier bag full of small quinces from aneighbour's tree. I've been looking for quinces for a while but have not found them to be in abundance in rural Staffordshire...

Just checking that all quinces are edible as they are mainly green with a few red patches. They don't look the usual yellow/orange colour when ripe,although they are starting to smell lovely - like roses and strawberries

looking forward to making quince paste and some quince brandy if they ripen!

anyone?

I thought there were two kinds of quince: edible ones (which are the big yellow ones) or perfumed ones (which I thought were not edible). I'll see if I can verify that for you. Does your neighbour cook hers?

Sorry, turns out I'm wrong. www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Grow-Your-Own/Fruit-A-to-Z/Quinces

This article is quite helpful about ripening quinces.

oh, thank you! looks like I have a long wait for them to ripen. The neighbour has never cooked with them, in fact didn't know what they were until dh pointed identified them.

You do get Japonica Quince which are an ornamental variety grown mainly for the flowers. The fruit are small but edible. We used to pick them wild near our house, they stayed small and green even when ripe.

this picture gives an idea what ours looked like.

They're just like the big ones to cook with but being smaller they're rather fiddly to peel and chop. Quince jelly/paste are quite easy though as you don't have to bother with all that.

We have a quince tree, and the quinces are green when ripe (well greeny yellow)

We made quince jelly for the first time this year, and it is delicious. One of the nicest jams I have ever eaten.

they are also good grated and added to an apple crumble

I would really like to try this candied quince recipe: I think the blog is written by an MNer. She has a quince glut every year so there are quite a few ideas there.

I wonder whose blog that is???

Ha ha - sorry, I didn't click your link! I love your blog. Also I think your (elder?) daughter is called the same as mine.

The eldest one is W and the youngest X. I've come across quite a few W's recently. Fingers crossed it doesn't get too popular!

Glad you like the blog, it's quite gratifying that someone other than me linked to it!

I got them the wrong way round then - mine is X too.

Yes your blog is lovely, and responsible for me spending quite a lot of time dreaming about moving to the country. I have always wanted my own quince tree.

You'd laugh if you could actually see my house. I live in a terrace on a main road! That's why we're so into foraging, we don't have the space to grow anything at home - the quince tree is wild btw, we don't own it.

Luckily though we're on the edge of town so literally a minute's walk from open countryside and now we've got 2 allotments the world is our smallholding : )