MT, Cydonia quince tend to be fireblight susceptible, but there are old, old quinces growing at farmsteads all across The Deep South - so some are certainly capable of standing up to the assault from Erwinia. Pseudocydonia(Chinese quince) is perhaps not so well known, but I got my seedlings by way of seed sent by a friend in LA/MS - so it can handle hot humid weather; fall foliage color is great, and photos I've seen of the exfoliating bark look like one of the better crape myrtles. Some Chaenomeles are heavier fruiters than others; don't know if there's been much in the way of selection for fruit size/quality. Ken - I used to eat those hard, green little fruits by the hundreds - with SALT on 'em! - as a kid. Have seen recipes for baking them, making marmalade, etc., substituting Chaenomeles fruits for those of the more traditional Cydonia quinces.

Blueberrier, I haven't seen your books. I feel like I'm in a backwater here . . . well, I know I am. There were 2 books on Asian vegetables/gardening that inspired me, years ago. They aren't my "go to" books because I kind of feel that I've "gone past them" these days. Still, reading them prompted me to try new things. The first was Better Vegetable Gardens the Chinese Way by Peter Chan. I read that about the same time I was reading about Bio-Dynamic/French Intensive gardening. That was about 35 years ago. Peter Chan seemed to simplify all that other stuff and I kind of never looked back. Well, I suppose I did by staying at least partly with matrix- and inter-planting in raised beds. The other book, I came across much later: Oriental Vegetables: The Complete Guide for the Gardening Cook, by Joy Larkcom. That book showed me that there was quite a wide world of vegetables and I was really limiting my gardening and diet by not exploring it. digitSteve

I adapted a recipe for basically a quince galette I found on the NYTimes cooking site last year and it was fabulous. You sauteed the quince in a bit of butter and then sprinkled it with some sugar (I used turbinado and no more than a tbsp or two) and then spread it on a pie crust and sprinkled it with toasted coarsely chopped nuts (I think I used pecans or walnuts) and some crumbled blue cheese. Baked it on tiles in a very hot oven until the crust was done and the cheese bubbly. Really, really good as a hot/room temp appetizer for holiday parties. If you search quince on the NYT cooking site, you should pull it up.

For the texture we like, I use four eggs to one cup of milk (I usually use 1/2 skim milk and 1/2 half and .half. Cheese is optional but we like a bit of gruyere or sharp cheddar, depending on what the other ingredients are. Have been makng it without a crust for years. Sometimes after spraying the pie plate, I roll some panko or panko mixed with parm around the pan and tap out the excess. Just adds another texture. Other than that, I wing it.