Wince! It’s a Quince!

Quince. Almost no one knows that it is a fruit, a very ugly fruit. Also described as hard, tart and astringent – bitter to you- and surprise, surprise “is seldom eaten raw”. So? It is made into jam, marmalade or paste. There it is – quince paste – the staple of the gift basket. You grind up that quince, add as much sugar as you can and let it set. And the quince sugar blob is in the gift basket because…goes well with a cheese board! Since quince paste is rarely seen outside a gift basket, I assumed that the Quince Growers Association has done a deal with purveyors of gift baskets to include the sweet yet rarely used comestible among the other goodies. Not so fast! I am reliably informed by http://quincehq.com.au/ that quince jelly had made appearances in movies, most notably Gone With The Wind when Scarlett O’Hara uses it to lay her hair down flat after it was freshly washed. Still, very few people know what a quince is, and fewer know how to use it. It simply fills the gift basket void between the macadamias and the fancy chocolates- because if you taste the quince, you will surely wince!