/kwɪns/

The night we ate sausage soup, our guests mentioned they had recently made some delicious quince-based treats. Quince? We had never heard of it. Was it an animal, vegetable, or mineral? Turns out, it's a fruit! We didn't have to wait too long to try them for ourselves as our generous guests gave us an entire bag of them the very next day!

Quince may be hard to find in your local U.S. farmer's market due to its susceptibility to fire blight. If you do find some, I wouldn't recommend eating one raw, as you might not like how it tastes. These tough and high-pectin fruits are ideal, however, for poaching or roasting, and they are often used in jams or preserves.

After some deliberation and an equipment-related delay (we didn't have a sharp enough knife to make it through the quince and had to go out and get one), we decided to start our quince adventure by following David Lebovitz's Rosy Poached Quince recipe.

After the poaching, we blended the now-soft quince pieces with a bit of the poaching juice to make this purée:

Then, we used this recipe to make quince paste, or membrillo, as it's called in Spain. It's a fragrant and slightly sweet jam-like paste that's supposed to be best when paired with Manchego cheese. (We still haven't tried this combination yet, but as I made 10,000 pounds of paste, I'm sure we will in the not-too-distant future.)

We then took David's suggestion to reduce the poaching liquid to a jellied state. Unfortunately, I think we went a little further than required and ended up with something a bit more like quince taffy.

It all worked out in the end as we enjoyed the bright, powerful taste of a few reserved poached quince slices and the quince taffy on top of vanilla ice cream. The next night we devoured some extremely good quince crêpes.

Most recently, the quince paste found a home in this utterly divine quince and apple tart. (Thanks to the kitchn for the filling recipe and smitten kitchen for the tart shell recipe.)

We still have a few tons of quince paste in the fridge and freezer. Any suggestions on what to do with it?