Quince fanatic Cathy Hughes will share her love of quinces at the Penola Coonawarra Arts Festival on Sunday, May 21.
Ms Hughes will have a selection of Smyrna, De Vranja, Champion and Van Deman quinces and jars of quince chutney available for purchase from the Makers Market in Petticoat Lane, 10am until 4pm.
Quinces are an old fruit that looks a bit like a cross between an apple and a pear and her favourite variety is the De Vranja.
Ms Hughes’ interest in the golden, aromatic quince extends to growing an orchard of all sixteen varieties currently known in Australia, researching and writing extensively about the fruit, and creating a small range of bespoke Quince HQ preserves.
“I have been fascinated with quinces for over half my lifetime,” she said.
“It started off with a friend showing me how to make a quince jelly preserve, then I did a little bit of reading and before I knew it, I was hooked.
“While they often are not eaten raw, I love the magic associated with slowly cooking quinces as they turn from a yellow fruit into a ruby-red confection.”
Ms Hughes said quinces were a fruit that had been around for well over 4000 years and historical records indicated their popularity in ancient Greece, Persia (now Iran) and Turkey, before spreading across many other parts of the world.
She said the first quince varieties arrived in Australia around 1870 when they did not have varietal names and were often referred to as orange, apple, or pear quinces due to their shape.
By the turn of the 20th century, quinces were widely used in home kitchens and commercially.
“They eventually went out of favour by the 1950s when fresh, sweeter fruits like pineapple, strawberries and apples became more readily available as supermarkets expanded, and women were increasingly being employed outside of the home and did not have time to be preserving foods like they did in previous generations,” Ms Hughes said.
However, in the 1970s, Australian food icon Maggie Beer rediscovered quinces growing on old properties around the Barossa region and the fruit slowly came back into vogue with her take on quince paste.
The cook was one of the first advocates to shine a light on the importance of regional food provenance and quinces.
There is not much Ms Hughes does not know about growing and cooking with quinces, but she said she is never short of inspiration as quinces have such a rich history and continue to be used in many cuisines, particularly across the Middle East, Europe and South America.
“Though quince paste and quince jelly are still popular preserves, quinces also feature in everything from traditional plovs made in Uzbekistan, grappas and liqueurs in Europe, pasta frola (quince tarts) in Argentina, are part of a rustic vegetable stew with eggplants and pumpkin made in Spain, and are the core ingredient in regional fruit mostardas (chutney) in Italy, just to name a few,” she said.
