Quince Jelly with Bourbon Vanilla

Quince jelly from Fink's Delikatessen, tart-sweet and silky

The quince jelly with Bourbon vanilla from Fink's Delikatessen is a clear, light jelly from Styria, made from pressed quince juice. It is just as at home on buttered bread as it is on a cheese board or alongside a fine pâté.

Quince jelly with Bourbon vanilla is the light quince jelly from Fink's Delikatessen, 220 grams in a jar. 72 percent quince juice, combined with Cido quince juice, ginger, and vanilla, creates a jelly that smells clearly of quince upon opening and keeps the fruit at the forefront, sweet with a fine acidity underneath.

Quince scent, a touch of ginger, and silky sweetness

When opened, the quince jelly from Fink's Delikatessen smells of ripe quince before ginger and vanilla join in to ground the sweetness. It remains silky on bread and can be spread thinly without running.

Two types of quince work together here, and you can tell by the tone of the fruit. The larger part is provided by the juice of the true quince, supplemented by Cido quince juice from the flowering quince, a small, hard fruit of Latvian breeding known for its acidity. The ginger does not add heat, but rather a quiet warmth. The Bourbon vanilla settles as a soft foundation underneath, so that in the end, nothing stands out and everything harmonizes.

From buttered bread with horseradish to foie gras

At the Fink household, they add some freshly grated Styrian horseradish to buttered bread with quince jelly, the sharpness of which balances the sweetness.

The jelly plays out its tart side with mature mountain cheese and blue cheese, and its sweet side with foie gras and fine pâtés. Stirred into rich sauces and liver dishes, it brings both fruit and acidity. Once opened, the jar will keep for a long time in the refrigerator when using a clean spoon. If you prefer dark fruit, the cherry jam with red wine and cardamom is nearby. It gets sunny yellow with the apricot jam from the Weinviertel, and both are among the jams and compotes of the house.

Everyone here can cook, but one person learned to preserve

There is a specific apprenticeship for what is in this jar, and only one person in the family has taken it.

Hans-Peter Fink Jr., born in 1998, completed his apprenticeship as a fruit and vegetable preserver in the family business, followed by an apprenticeship as a chef at Landhaus Bacher. Afterwards, he cooked in Munich, on the Moselle, and in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland; today, he is the head chef at the stove. Anyone who has learned how to preserve fruit knows when a jelly has set and when it needs one more minute. That one minute determines whether it stays on the spoon later or flows back off.

A fruit that waits for the kitchen

Raw, the quince is nothing. It hangs on the tree in autumn, hard, woody, and fuzzy.

In return, a single quince in the fruit bowl fills an entire room with its scent within days. Only heat makes it soft and releases that aroma which lies between apple and pear, yet is neither. The house calls this method "Quince Light Jelly," where the fruit's juice plays the leading role. At Fink's Delikatessen, the raw materials come almost exclusively from Austria, and the jars are filled in the workshop in Ilz, east of Graz.