The golden apples of Greek myth may really have been quinces
Hard, sour and gritty when raw, the quince hardly sounds like a legendary fruit. Yet the ancients called it a golden apple, dedicated it to Aphrodite and used it in wedding rites. Some scholars think the golden apples tied to Hercules were quinces, and the Portuguese word for the fruit gave English marmalade.
The quince is the only species in its genus, a relative of apples and pears. Its homeland is Iran's Hyrcanian forest belt below the Caspian, and Neolithic farmers carried it outward between about 5000 and 3000 BC to Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan and Kashmir, whence it reached Europe, China, India and North Africa. It thrived in the heat of Mesopotamia, where apples struggled. Charlemagne ordered it planted in orchards, Edward I grew it at the Tower of London around 1275, and colonists took it to North America in the 17th century.
The Greeks linked it with Kydonia on Crete, and the name Kydonian apple travelled through Latin and Old French into English. As Aphrodite's fruit it starred in a lost poem by Callimachus: a young man scratches a vow on a quince and rolls it toward his beloved, who reads it aloud and so binds herself to marry him in the goddess's sacred ground. Plutarch reports that Solon required a bride and groom to share a quince in their chamber, and in the Balkans a quince tree is still planted when a baby is born.
The fruit can weigh up to a kilogram and stays hard even when ripe. Most varieties need cooking, and long simmering with sugar turns the flesh red as anthocyanin pigments develop. High pectin makes it ideal for jellies; the Iberian paste dulce de membrillo is eaten with manchego, while Syrian cooks add quince to kibbeh and Balkan distillers turn it into rakija. Its seeds contain nitriles that can release hydrogen cyanide in the stomach, but only large quantities are dangerous.
World production reached 687,036 tonnes in 2023, with Turkey and China supplying 44 percent. Edward Lear's owl and pussycat famously dined on mince and slices of quince.
Source: Quince
