Quince fruit spread by Alpe Pragas, floral and tart
The Quince fruit spread from Alpe Pragas is a floral-tart spread made from aromatic quinces with 75 percent fruit, gently simmered with a little sugar and apple pectin. Golden yellow and refined, it tastes great on bread, in yogurt, and especially with cheese; packaged in a 335-gram jar.
Quince fruit spread by Alpe Pragas is a South Tyrolean spread made from quinces, a member of the rose family, referred to as Cidonia on the label. Quince puree leads the list of ingredients, followed by sugar, a little lemon juice, and apple pectin as a binding agent.
Golden yellow, floral, tart-sweet
As soon as you open the jar, the unmistakable, floral scent of ripe quinces rises up.
Spread on bread, it tastes delicately tart-sweet, with the typical, almost perfumed quince aroma that lies somewhere between apple and pear. Golden yellow to amber in color, it is a spread with character that tastes of autumn and old orchards.
The consistency is soft and spreadable, with fine pieces of fruit throughout. During simmering, the color often deepens into a warm amber, a lovely sign of the fruit's slow transformation.
The almost forgotten quince
The quince, a rose family fruit between an apple and a pear, is currently finding its way back into kitchens after years of being forgotten.
Raw, this pome fruit remains hard and tart; it only shows its strength when cooked: the firm flesh becomes soft, sweet, and fragrant. In Spain, it is prized as quince jelly and quince paste (membrillo), which is served with strong cheese, and that is exactly what this spread is made for.
It has carried its name since antiquity, named after the Cretan city of Kydonia, which appears as Cidonia on the label. Its fragrance was once reason enough to place a raw quince in the wardrobe, where it would perfume the laundry for weeks.
A fruit that almost contains its own setting agent
The quince is one of the most pectin-rich fruits in existence, which is why jelly made from it sets even without additives.
At Alpe Pragas, apple pectin is added anyway so that the consistency remains uniform from batch to batch. The fruit is processed as a puree, because its hard flesh requires heat before it can be spread at all.
It is peeled, cored, and sliced by hand, and the fine down on the skin must be removed first, otherwise you would still perceive it in the jar. It is harvested late in autumn, when the fruit hangs yellow and heavy from the branches, and after that, the process must be swift.
The classic for a cheese platter
On fresh white bread, in muesli, or over pancakes and crêpes, the quince is a floral-tart start to the day.
Its greatest strength, however, is the cheese platter, where it is a classic companion to mature mountain cheese and spicy blue cheese. A spoonful added to game or a pâté rounds off savory plates, and even a slice of mild cheese with quince makes for a sophisticated breakfast.
On a cracker, a piece of ripe Manchego and a dollop of quince make for a small, elegant snack with wine. It tastes just as good stirred into plain yogurt with walnuts as it does on warm buttered toast. Its tartness also stands up effortlessly to air-dried ham.
A similarly refined fruit spread is the Pear Lime. The entire selection can be found among the Alpe Pragas fruit spreads, and everything else in the Alpe Pragas product range.
