Quince
They dined on mince, and slices of quince, / Which they ate with a runcible spoon—Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat.
To me, as a child, quince might just as well have been as much a made-up word as runcible: I had never seen such a thing, much less dined on slices of one. Last year, in one of the local supermarkets, I spotted jars of kvitten marmelad (‘quince marmelade’), and was curious to try some: I found I very much enjoyed the delicately scented flavour of this pinkish, Iranian-made preserve, runnier than what I would consider to be proper marmelade-texture, having been brought up on Robertson’s ‘Golden Shred,’ but including good-size chunks of the fruit.
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”
Since then, I have tried ‘quince cheese’ aka marmelada, which I was surprised to find in our local deli, as well as a small pot of French quince jam. I think I have seen the fruits themselves in one of the out-of-town supermarkets here: I’d like to try my hand at cooking something with them.
It was for a golden quince that Atalanta paused in her race.
