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The Quince Cydonia oblonga, the sole member of the genus Cydonia, is a small to medium size tree native to warm-temperate southwest Asia in the Caucasus region. It is a fruit tree related to apples and pears, and like them has a pome fruit, which is bright golden yellow when mature, pear-shaped, 7-12 cm long and 6-9 cm broad; the fruit flesh is hard, and strongly perfumed. The immature fruit are green, with dense grey-white pubescence which mostly (but not all) rubs off before maturity. The leaves are alternately arranged, simple, 6-11 cm long, with a serrated margin and densely pubescent with fine white hairs. The flowerA flower is the reproductive organ of those plants classified as angiosperms ( flowering plants; Division Magnoliophyta). The function of a flower is to produce seeds through sexual reproduction''. For the higher plants, seeds are the next generation, ands, produced in spring after the leaves, are white or pink, 5 cm across, with five petals.

1 Uses

Quinces are too hard, astringent and sour to eat raw unless 'bletted' (softened by frostThis article is about the weather phenomenon. Frost is also the name of a place (see Frost, Minnesota), a Freenet client (see Frost), an Australian band (see Frost (band)), a video game character and a common surname i. Doug Frost or Robert Frost. Frost l); they are used to make jamFor other meanings of the word "jam", see Jam (disambiguation Jam is a type of fruit preserve. It is a way of preserving fruit by boiling it with sugar to make an unfiltered jelly. The proportion varies according to the type of fruit and its ripeness, but, jellyJelly is a sweet or savoury food gel, usually through the addition of gelatin or pectin. Sweet food gels include gelatin desserts such as Jell-O and blancmange or fruit jam. Savoury food gels include aspic or plain gelatine. In beekeeping, royal jelly is and quince puddingQuince pudding recipe from the 1881 Household Cyclopedia Scald the quinces tender, pare them thin, scrape off the pulp, mix with sugar very sweet, and add a little ginger and cinnamon. To a pint of cream put three or four yolks of eggs, and stir it into t. The very strong perfume means they can be added in small quantities to apple pies and jam to enhance the flavour. The term " marmaladeMarmalade is a sweet conserve made from fruit, sugar, and (usually) a gelling agent. In Anglo-American usage the term almost invariably refers to a conserve derived from oranges or from some other citrus fruit. Typically the recipe will include sliced fru", originally meaning a quince jam, derives from the PortuguesePortuguese portugues is a Romance language predominantly spoken in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and East Timor. With more than 200 million native speakers, Portuguese is one of the few languages spoken in such widely-distributed parts word for this fruit marmelo. The fruit, like so many others, can be used to make a type of wineThis article is about the beverage. See WINE for an article about the software of the same name. Wine is an alcoholic beverage typically made by fermentation of grapes. The word comes from Greek omicron;ινο&sigmaf through Latin vinum, (bot.

Cultivation of quince may have preceded apple culture, and the "apple" in the Song of Solomon may have been a quince. Among the ancient Greeks, the quince was a ritual offering at weddings, for it had come from the Levant with Aphrodite and remained sacred to her. Plutarch reports that a Greek bride would nibble a quince to perfume her kiss before entering the bridal chamber, "in order that the first greeting may not be disagreeable nor unpleasant" (Roman Questions 3.65). It was a quince that Paris awarded Aphrodite. It was for a golden quince that Atalanta paused in her race. The best kind of quince came from the region of Cydonia on the northwest coast of Crete, the fruit becoming known to the Greeks as Mela Kudonia or "Cydonian apple", whence also the scientific name of the genus. The Romans also used quinces; the Roman cookbook of Apicius gives recipes for stewing quince with honey, and even combining them, unexpectedly for us, with leeks. Pliny mentioned the one variety, Mulvian quince, that could be eaten raw. Columella mentioned three, one of which, the "golden apple" that may have been the paradisal fruit in the Garden of the Hesperides, has donated its name in Italian to the tomato, pomodoro.

Elsewhere in Europe, quinces are commonly grown in central and southern areas where the summers are sufficiently hot for good ripening of the fruit. They are not grown in large amounts; typically one or two quince trees will be grown in a mixed orchard with several apples and other fruit trees. Charlemagne directed that quinces be planted in well-stocked orchards. Quinces are mentioned for the first time in an English text in the later 13th century, though cultivation in England is not very successful due to inadequate summer heat to ripen the fruit fully. They were also introduced to the New World, but have become rare in North America due to their susceptibilty to fireblight disease caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora. They are still widely grown in Argentina and Uruguay. Almost all the quinces in North American specialty markets come from Argentina.