I like them fresh, although some varieties can be very sour. I have a variety called Aromatnaya and it is delicious fresh. The best recipe for quince is when it's made into jelly. It makes a delicious jelly, the color turns into orange color once cooked.

Bass

Try posting this over on the Harvest Forum. They'll have so many ideas you'll need another quince tree.

Thank you very much! I hadn't noticed the Harvest forum during my browsing, I have lots of other questions that would be more appropriate there.

I like the juice sweetened and mixed with carbonated water. It makes a delicious soda.

I like to cut them and bake them with a lot of vanilla sugar and a little water until they turn pink and the juices in the pan turn to syrup/jelly. Then eat it with vanilla icecream. My wife eats it with yogurt.

You can make sauce like apple sauce with added sweetener. Its tangy and more flavorful than applesauce.

Membrillo -- it's equal parts quince pulp and sugar, cooked down past the apple butter stage, to the point where the natural pectin makes it set firmly. Optionally, you can add flavorings. Vanilla is traditional. I think ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove would be nice in moderation.

Once cooked, its poured out into a pan about 1/2 inch deep and allowed to jell, and then cut into squares about an inch across. Rolled in granulated or powdered sugar or even dipped in chocolate, it's a very good jellied fruit candy.

There are quite a few sites on the internet that give specific recipes and instructions.

If you have a lot of quinces and don't know what to do with them, this is a pretty good use.

1. Mix them with sweet apples for pie (what my neighbor does)

2. Make "membrillo"

3. Paradise jelly (I've made almost 20 jars this year).

4. Preserves

Linda Zeidrich's Joy of Jams has a few quince recipes, try doing a search on Harvest forum too.

Here's my recipe (small batch, the original was a huge batch) for Paradise Jelly (apple-quince-cranberry):

Paradise Jelly (makes 3 halfpints)

I steamed the quinces a couple of days ahead and put the juice in the fridge. Didn't weigh them, but probably 5 lbs of quinces yielded about 7.5 cups of juice - or at least brown water (I'm not sure how much pectin was in the juice - I kept adding water to the pot while steaming.). I think the juice would have been lighter if I had simmered the quinces, or if I had a steam juicer, instead of trying to steam them in the oven - they oxidized. Then I did the apples and cranberries another day (just 5lbs of mixed apples, not all tart, most Golden and Red (?) Delicious since that's what I had. Got about 6 cups of juice from those.)

Used a 12-oz bag of cranberries cooked until just popped in the hot strained apple juice, let drain in linen jelly bag for 5 hours, refrigerated juice and put the fruit pulp into a Ziploc bag with the apple pulp.

I milled the fruit the next day, cooked with 1/2C of sugar, and made about 36 oz (pint, 12-oz jar processed 20 min and 8-oz jar in fridge) of cran-applesauce. I strained the apple-cranberry juice through coffee filters the next day.

Now, for the jelly:

Mix the quince juice and the cran-apple juice half and half (or whatever you have). Use no more than 4C of juice total, or this will set before you get it in the jars. Use at least a 6-quart (deep) preserving pan b/c it will foam up like crazy.

Add 3C of sugar to the 4C of juice, I also added 1 tsp of bottled (strained) lemon juice. Simmer, stirring constantly, until the sugar is dissolved, then raise heat to a boil (make sure your canner is preheated with the jars sterilized if processing only 5 minutes). Boil until gel point (220 at sea level) or until jelly sheets from a metal spoon (remove from heat while testing). Quickly skim if necessary. Jar immediately, keeping ladle close to funnel. Do all 3 jars at once, then go back and spoon off any foam from the top of the jars, adjust the headspace to 1/4", wipe rims and put lids and rings on. DON'T use a bubble freer even if you see tiny bubbles in the jars - just wait til they rise to the surface and spoon the foam off. Process 5 minutes (for sterilized jars) or 10 min (for unsterilized) in BWB.

The last jar you fill may have some small bubbles, and you might have an ounce or 2 left in the pan to put in the fridge. Rinse out the pan with very hot water and dry before starting the next batch - you don't want "threads" of old jelly in the new batch.

This may set up very quickly (while you're ladling it into the jars) or it may take a couple of weeks depending on the pectin level of the juice. Set the cooled jars away on a level surface and leave them alone for 2-3 weeks before you decide you've made syrup instead of jelly. I tried reprocessing some and found that the top of the jar was liquid after a week, but the bottom was starting to set so I should have left it alone. The apple-quince jelly I made is taking longer to set than the stuff with cranberry in it.

I think the household won that election. Your waxy comment is interesting, many quince have a waxy peel, I mention that because some apple pie recipes might use unpeeled apples.

The simplest way to use lots of quince is to use them like apples in applesauce. They can be combined with apples and pears in the sauce.

Quince juice will be more concentrated if made using a masticating juicer designed for harder fruits.

Fun little factoid - the seeds are loaded with pectin too and the result was the origin of hair gel long ago. I had forgotten that until I got some seeds out of a fruit and put them in a little bowl of water to get them ready for chilling and sowing. The next day they were charmingly suspended in a cup of clear goo.
And they stew into the lovliest colors! Cubed up, a little honey, vanilla bean and a bit of lemon. Served hot in a bowl with a spoon!

I just heard an idea about quinces which I wonder if anyone has tried.....sometimes fruit, when in storage, will pick up the flavor or scent of that fruit or vegetable that it is stored next to....and so, theoretically, you could put a few quinces in with the storage of your apples to give a little extra flavor to those apples, ie., use your quinces merely for flavor cross-overs.

Anyway, I have not visitted the Harvest forum yet, but thought I'd throw this idea out.....not knowing if it has merit or not.

Here is a spanish recipe named "Carne de membrillo" similar to that posted by Maria,

Peeling, remove the seeds and chop the quince. Place in a pan 1 Kg. of sugar and 2.5 Kg of quince.
Wait 8 hours
Cook and stir continuously with a wooden spoon until it gets a semisolid consistency.
Put in molds half inch thick. Store in refrigerator.

Good luck!

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/1180/membrillos10.jpg

Sorry, I meant...that posted by denninmi