Gadenin日本語Get the appWait for gold, then wait for the smell
Quince is the last tree fruit to come off, well after apples and pears, and the commonest mistake is picking it too early because it looks big and finished. An unripe quince is green under its gray down, stays rock hard however long you keep it, and cooks to a dull beige with no perfume. Leave the fruit on the tree until the skin turns from green through pale yellow to a deep even gold.
The second test is the nose. A ripe quince is one of the most strongly scented things you can grow: a bowl of them will fill a room, and on a still autumn afternoon you can smell a laden tree from several yards away. If you have to hold a fruit to your face to smell anything, it has more time to go.
The third is the down. Young fruit is covered in a gray woolly felt. As it ripens, that felt rubs away until the skin beneath is smooth and waxy. A fruit that is gold, smooth and fragrant is ready. Do not wait for softness; a ripe quince is still hard, and softness at this stage means bruising or rot inside.
| Sign | Not ready | Ready to pick |
|---|---|---|
| Skin color | Green, or green shading to yellow | Even deep gold all over |
| Gray down | Thick and woolly | Mostly rubbed away, skin smooth |
| Scent | Faint, only close up | Carries several feet from the tree |
| Firmness | Hard | Still hard, which is correct |
| Stalk | Holds firmly when lifted | Parts with a gentle upward twist |
| Seeds if you cut one | White or pale | Dark brown |
Do not eat it raw, and say so to visitors
However ripe and fragrant it smells, the fruit is hard, astringent and gritty raw, and the tannins dry the mouth immediately. This is not a fault of your tree or a sign that you picked wrong. Quince is grown to be cooked, and everything good about it appears in the pan: sliced and simmered slowly with sugar it softens, loses the astringency and turns amber, coral or deep rose depending on how long it cooks.
Tell anyone who sees the bowl and reaches for one. The disappointment of biting into a raw quince is what makes people write the tree off, and it is entirely avoidable with one sentence.
The core and pips are full of pectin, which is why quince sets so hard in a preserve. Keep the trimmings, simmer them in a muslin bag with the fruit and lift them out before potting; you will not need added pectin for anything you make.
Pick every fruit by hand
Quince bruises far more easily than its stony feel suggests, and a bruise is not cosmetic: the flesh under it browns within a day or two and rot spreads from that point through the whole fruit in storage. There is no shaking the tree, no picking into a bucket from height and no tipping fruit from one container to another. Every fruit is lifted, twisted and set down individually.
- Pick on a dry day Wet fruit going into store rots. If it has rained, wait a day for the skins to dry on the tree rather than drying them with a cloth, which rubs the skin and marks it.
- Cup and twist upward Take the whole fruit in your palm, lift it and twist gently. A ripe quince parts at the stalk. If you have to pull hard, leave it another week and come back to it.
- Keep the stalk on A fruit that loses its stalk has an open wound at the top and will rot there first. Use those for cooking within a few days rather than putting them into store.
- Lay each one down, never drop Line the picking basket with cloth and lay the fruit in a single layer, stalk upward. Do not stack. A drop of six inches (15 cm) onto another fruit is enough to bruise both.
- Sort as you go Anything marked, blotched, split or with a scar goes into a separate box for immediate cooking. Never put a damaged fruit in with sound ones; one rot spreads through a tray.
Store in one layer, and away from everything else
Quince keeps for two to three months in a cool, dark, airy place at 34 to 45F (1-7C), which for most people means a shed, a garage or an unheated back room. The rules are simple: a single layer, never touching, stalk upward, on a tray or slatted shelf, checked over every couple of weeks with anything softening or browning taken out.
The one rule people miss is that quince must be stored on its own. The perfume is volatile and powerful, and it moves straight into other food: apples and pears stored in the same room take on the flavor, and anything with fat in it, such as butter, cheese or eggs, absorbs it within days and is unpleasant. Keep quince out of the refrigerator and out of a shared fruit store. A room where it is the only thing being kept is the right place.
Fruit that has been damaged does not keep at all and should be cooked within days. Cooked quince, whether as a paste, a jelly or poached slices, keeps far longer than the raw fruit, so a heavy year is best dealt with by processing early rather than by hoping the store will hold.
Record the picking date and the weight taken from each tree, and note whether the fruit was gold or still greenish when you picked. Two or three years of that tells you your own ripening window far better than any general date, and quince ripens later than most people expect.