The quince is Aphrodite’s fruit, just as the rose is her flower. It is the fruit of love, of marriage and of fertility.

A platter of quinces

And it’s not just the poets who celebrate this beautiful golden fruit from the east.  The late English food writer Jane Grigson sings its praises in her `Fruit Book’ (Penguin): “In spring on a warm day, if you sit in the lee of flowering quinces, you become quietly aware of a narcissus scent on the puffs of breeze. Very much the scent of the beginnings of love.  The furling twist of the bud, pink and white, opens into a globe of pale pink, ruffed with leaves – its mildness goes unnoticed if you walk by without stopping.”
Quinces are in season, so if you’ve never seen one, now is the time. It’s suprising how many people don’t know them, mistaking them for lemons or pears (their shape and colour are similar). At $4.99/kg they make sensible buying and once you start cooking with them, a whole new world will open up: jams, conserves, pastes, jellies, sauces, cakes, pies, sorbets, ice creams, soups, tagines and sambals.
South Australian chef and food writer Maggie Beer has long been a fan of the quince. In her charming book, “Maggie’s Harvest” , she sings their praises and talks about planting her quince orchard, which numbers over 350 trees, at the Pheasant Farm in the Barossa Valley. “This wonderfully evocative fruit was my first link to the land in a sense,” she writes.”When we were looking for a place in the Barossa…we looked at many farmhouses and, even at the most derelict of places, where the gardens and orchards had been left unattended for years, there would be a surviving quince tree…the spring blossom makes a beautiful sight”.
She points out the difference between the Smyrna quince and the larger pineapple quince.  The latter is not as “quince” in flavour and also breaks up in long cooking, so if you are going to make the poached quinces, try to find the smaller Smyrna quinces.

“It had a cloak of ash-coloured
down hovering over
its smooth golden body,
and when it lay naked in my
hand, with nothing more
than its daffodil-coloured
shift, it made me think of her
I cannot mention, and I feared
the ardour of my breath would
shrivel it in my fingers.
Isn’t that Aphrodite’s apple?
- Shafer ben Utman al-Mushafi