If you’ve ever overlooked the outward appearance only to find yourself perpetually waiting for the inner beauty, then this is the fruit for you!
APPEARANCE Rating: ★★★☆☆

Pale yellow skin with a thick layer of brown fuzz. This little fruit could use some grooming tips. Funky wobbly shape about the size of a softball with off-white flesh

AROMA Rating: ★★★★☆

Bright, fresh and very very appley with the slightest bit of lemon

TEXTURE Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Really hard and dry, almost like biting in to fine wood

TASTE Rating: ★½☆☆☆

Fairly dry, slightly spongy and tart

OVERALL Overall Rating: ★★½☆☆

Everything I have read about Quince says they are too tart and astringent to eat raw. This particular variety doesn’t really have those problems, I could eat it if I really wanted to (no noticeable astringency to me), it just doesn’t taste good. It wasn’t that much more tart than a bad granny smith apple. That being said, apparently quince become all mystical and amazing once cooked, but dare I mention in the third post in a row that I prefer to be lazy and not have to chop and peel and cook and stuff just to eat a piece of fruit. So my apologies dear orange quince (also known as the apple-shaped quince), but you will not be scoring well on the snacking scale today.

FRUIT

Quince

VARIETY

Orange (aka: Apple-shaped)

PEAK

Fall -Winter

GROWN

California

PURCHASED

Farmer’s Market

NOTES

Lest you think I’ve let you down, (and so I don’t start receiving hate mail from quince lovers everywhere) I did poach these little funky girls. Sadly, I had also heard that quince turn a lovely shade of red when poached, but these did not. They stayed their pale yellow color, which I now know is normal for this variety. They tasted good I suppose with a complicated floral apple taste and a citrus undertone but I just can’t get that excited about them. I even baked them into a free form pie with the hidden rose apples I had leftover. “Eh.” That’s about all I can say about them. I do think I will try another variety though. I’ve just heard too many good things to let them go at one try.