Well, yes and no. They can be reasonably sweet when fully ripe, but the texture is somewhat firm to tough and woody, and raw there is some level of astringency, nothing like an underipe astringent persimmon by any means, but overall not something you would eat like an apple. A few tastes or slices when you're peeling and coring them to cook with, maybe. But wonderful in cooked products like sauces, pies, jelly.

There is a relatively new variety in the trade called Karp's Sweet -- I planted one a few springs back but not yet bearing, it will be interesting to see how this is, its said to be of high enough quality to eat fresh.

Sweet quince may end up being a novelty as the texture of the fruit would have to also change to make it broadly appealing.

Chewing down on a quince leaves you with basically a mouthful of sawdust. Enjoy the flavor, then start spitting.

That's why quince is a cooking/baking fruit. Maybe Karp's will change that.

Unfortunately Karp says his quince (and I think this goes for others like Aromatnaya too) only gets sweet in long hot summers like in California.

I grow Crimea quince from One Green World. It is one of my favorite fruits. It is delicious fresh. I cut it into slices. Everyone who has eaten it has liked it. I live in NOrthern Oregon, on the border of Washington State. We get much less heat than most of the country. I have to grow it in full sun, and it ripens in October. It is so outstandingly productive that I am still eating the fruit I froze 2 years ago. When you freeze it, the texture changes from very dense to about the texture of a peach. The Russian quinces in general are good for fresh eating. Aromatnaya tastes good, but it is milder in flavor than Crimea, Kaunching or Kuganskaya, all of which are absolutely delicious, like your most extreme heirloom apple. Think Karmijn da Sonnaville, or Gold rush.

ONe warning I will give is that they get rust here, so I spray them with compost tea, fungal oriented, and that takes care of it. We don't have fireblight here, so I can't speak of it.
John S
PDX OR

OK, let's pin this down. John, are you saying that the Crimea quince is good fresh-eating, or is it good only after being frozen and then thawed? I am interested mainly in the fresh texture as even my ordinary pineapple quince tastes great fresh, juiced, sauced, etc.

One would like to eat fresh quince like an apple without extra chewing. Cutting into very thin slices would be one way of doing this, but it's not like the big bite right off the tree.

Sorry I missed this earlier, Larry. THey are great fresh before freezing. I cut them into slices. I never take a big bite out of them. I tried once and I could, I just don't want to. After freezing them, their texture is soft, like an apricot. I don't slice them after freezing them.
John S
PDX OR

There are some cultivars that seem to be softer and eaten like other fruit. I am curious if you can cook those down into quince paste or if they are simply suited to eating as fruit itself.

Very few of the Cydonia "eating" quinces survive fireblight here in the hot wet south, but Just Fruits and Exotics sells a couple. I grow "Orange" with not much trouble. It is not as strongly aromatic as the best from dryer areas but is OK. I think quince jelly and a measure of quince in apple sauce is the way to go under my limits. Partial substitution for apples in any other cooked or shredded/diced dish probabaly is good too (I should try a bit in the turkey stuffing at Thanksgiving).

My favorite quince legend, of the strongly aromatic Asian selections, is "one can note the aroma of a single quince in the baggage of a camal caravan." Now THAT'S some strong aroma.

My grandfather used to claim that "quince is a small fruit, one of which is sufficient to ruin an entire barrel of apple jelly."

Just one man's opinion- I have no experience myself!

:-)M

Mark, it sounds like your grandfather was talking about an ornamental quince. The eating kind are huge, bigger than just about any apple.

I greatly appreciate having quince around, they have a unique strong flavor and aroma. Making an apple sauce with 1/4th quince gives it some serious ZING! Too bad fireblight is so bad on them, I took out my first round of suffering trees and am trying one more round to see if there is some more fireblight resistance in other varieties.

Scott

The largest quince fruit I have ever seen was from a dwarf ornamental (flowering) quince. The plant was about two feet tall (and was still in its sales pot) and the quince was a hair larger than a softball.

Any experience eating Karp's Sweet Quince? I really like eating them fresh. . Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Karp's Sweet is like a kind of tart, not fully ripe Granny Smith Apple, but more dense. It has no astringency at all, and is fairly sweet (I mean sweet for a quince). In my opinion Karp's has slightly less flavor than other varieties, but the improvement in texture is well worth the slight loss. It is still best to slice thin, but if one really wanted to it could be eaten in thicker pieces.

I would imagine that most people, if they tried it, would compare Karp's Sweet to a so-so apple. Decent flavor, alluring aroma, but not quite ripe yet. But if you are a quince connoisseur, it is definitely a remarkable variety.

Karp's Sweet really needs to be grown in a climate with a long warm summer to reach it's maximum ripeness, otherwise it's not going to be much better than Orange quince (still, some quince enthusiasts like to eat Orange quince raw).

If you slice it into thin pieces and poach it for just a minute, that can help soften it up and it can go well in desert dishes, like a French Winter Pear.

I think Karp's Sweet might also have a slightly lower chill requirement than other quinces, it seems to grow vigorously in zone 10, even with less than 100 chill hours.

Kuganskaya

"Crimea" (Krimskaya)

I tasted one of the unripe Crimea fruits. It tasted like a cider apple, maybe halfway between a regular quince and a hard Granny Smith Appple. It seemed to have half the tannin level of a regular quince, and I'd say was barely edible (or maybe semi-edible) cut into thin slices. Keep in mind this was an unripe fruit I'm describing.