Quince: older than the apple, almost forgotten.
Quince is one of the oldest cultivated fruits there is, some food historians think it predates the apple itself, and it may even be the fruit at the centre of older stories than either of us could guess. And yet it's all but vanished from modern kitchens, for one simple reason: you can't eat it raw. It has to be cooked, slowly, before it gives up it’s beautiful, warm flavour.
Paired here with crab apples from our own orchard, the fruit that quietly provides the pectin most other fruits need help from, the two cook down together into a jelly of real clarity, lightly floral, with a bright, tart edge that no shop-bought apple comes close to.
It's the kind of jelly that can sit next to rich game or a strong cheese without flinching, but it's just as happy lifting something ordinary, a cold meat sandwich, a quiet Tuesday supper, into something worth noticing.
Ingredients: Water, Sugar, Crab apples, Quince, Lemon juice.
Grown in our own orchard at Cross Bank Farm.
Quince: older than the apple, almost forgotten.
Quince is one of the oldest cultivated fruits there is, some food historians think it predates the apple itself, and it may even be the fruit at the centre of older stories than either of us could guess. And yet it's all but vanished from modern kitchens, for one simple reason: you can't eat it raw. It has to be cooked, slowly, before it gives up it’s beautiful, warm flavour.
Paired here with crab apples from our own orchard, the fruit that quietly provides the pectin most other fruits need help from, the two cook down together into a jelly of real clarity, lightly floral, with a bright, tart edge that no shop-bought apple comes close to.
It's the kind of jelly that can sit next to rich game or a strong cheese without flinching, but it's just as happy lifting something ordinary, a cold meat sandwich, a quiet Tuesday supper, into something worth noticing.
Ingredients: Water, Sugar, Crab apples, Quince, Lemon juice.
Grown in our own orchard at Cross Bank Farm.