The Quince Collection is Complete

A spoon of Quince Rose Geranium Grappa Preserves—made in my 505 Boylston Ave Seattle apartment circa 2012—introduced me to the intense and almost overwhelming flavor-beauty of small-batch fruit preserves. This is what preserves can do? This is what quince tastes like!? It was a real fireworks moment for me.

During my first year of professional jam production, I grew alarmed at the amount of labor accumulating in each pot of jam. I started experimenting with the recipes again and attempted what sounded like a more streamlined version of the Quince Rose Geranium Grappa recipe. It yielded 4 jam pans worth of unsellable honey quince mass. Instead of throwing out the quince and honey, I used it for more product development, spinning it into what eventually became 3 new quince flavors including a now-retired one, Sour Cherry Quince.

A kitchen disaster created Pear Quince Fig Conserve with Meyer Lemon and Quince Orange Ginger Pear Marmalade, which I’ve produced every year since VSP’s start along with the traditional Paradise Marmalade, which is a combo of cranberry, apple and quince. That cranberry quince flavor is beautiful with cheese and wonderful for all kinds of baking, braising and general vegetable cookery/saucing (cabbage with this marmalade is super yummy!).

Upon arriving to Vermont, where quince got harder to source, I got scrappier about my quince scrap aka the fruit skin and cores. We save all the peelings, seed and knobby bits, using it for the juice portion of the quince recipes, but the scrap also inspired a new flavor, Quince Rose & Meyer Lemon Marmalade.

Enjoy the entire collection!