[Sca-cooks] RE: Quinces/Cotignac

[Chris Stanifer]

Well, apparently there is a 300 acre quince orchard just south of Fresno in the San Joaquin
Valley... about 45 - 50 minutes from my home :)  Harvest season is from August to January, so I
will be making a little trip up the road in a few days to try to find this place.  Maybe I'll even
head up into Fresno to hit the Chicken Pie Shop while I'm in the area (great chicken pot pies,
even if the gravy is SpongeBob yellow).

As for Cotignac, if you do a Google search, make sure you search for 'cotignac quince' or some
such.  A simple search for 'Cotignac' will send you to a flurry of pages on the actual village of
Cotignac (which is stunningly beautiful from all accounts).  By the way.... there is a 6-person
apartment for rent in the old Oil Press, which would run each person about $162 U.S for a week in
the off-season....hint hint...

The Splendid Table cites these remarks from David Karp regarding the Quince:

"The quince is native to the Caucasus and northern Persia, but cultivation spread to the eastern
Mediterranean basin. Many suppose that the Forbidden Fruit of the Garden of Eden was a quince. In
Greek legend, Helen of Troy bribed Paris to award a quince to Aphrodite as the prize in a beauty
contest, starting the Trojan War.

Medieval cooks regarded the quince as the most useful of fruits, and spiced it with pepper,ginger,
cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. At medieval courts and banquets, nobles enjoyed quince jelly for
dessert: cotignac in France, cotogna in Italy, and carne de membrillo in Spain, all still popular.
In Tudor and Stuart times, quince marmalade, wrapped in gold foil, was regarded as an aphrodisiac.
Today, the quince is especially popular in subtropical climates, such as parts of Mexico and Latin
America, where deciduous tree fruits like apples do not thrive."

Further:

"The main variety at commercial markets is the Pineapple, from California, where about 300 acres
of quinces thrive in the San Joaquin Valley south of Fresno. The light-skinned, white-fleshed
Pineapple quince supposedly tastes like its tropical namesake, though it is often picked too green
for best aroma and flavor. The season runs from August into January or February, when a few quince
are imported from Chile. As for other American varieties, a few small growers offer Orange quince,
which actually includes several similar varieties of nearly round, bright-colored fruit. A
late-season variety is the Champion, a very fuzzy, pear-shaped, delicately flavored variety. Then
there’s the very rare Portugal, which I thought was extinct in America until I saw one recently at
the Santa Monica Farmers Market. It’s a giant, bulbous, football-shaped behemoth, like the quince
in engravings from the 17th and 18th centuries, with a particularly deep, rich flavor."

The cotignac I have made was very easy to produce, and the high pectin content made it very easy
to mold and unmold.  I used a Carmex tin, and made a 'Crusader Cross' stamp out of Polymer Clay
(shhhh!) to imprint the design.  The first attempt stuck to the tin, so I dusted it very lightly
with cornstarch and the rest came out with no problem.  I'm assuming one could use a bit of oil
and dusting of sugar to facilitate unmolding, which might be more 'period' (I don't know).  All in
all, the candies were very good (slightly tart-sweet with a nice pink color...not the deep red I
have seen in pictures), but a bit of a pain to do one at a time in the Carmex tin :)

William de Grandfort





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Every heart to love will come... but like a refugee.


		
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