Quitte

Membrillo and sheep cheese: tannin and salt, one paste and one crumble.

Persian logic: fruit acid handles mutton fat better than any vinegar.

Long cooking turns quince tannin sweet, which is exactly what pork shoulder wants.

A spoonful of quince gives an apple tart the perfume it never had.

Both are floral and slow; honey covers the tannin quince leaves behind.

The fruit is already half rose. Water it and the perfume doubles.

Poaching liquid turns red anyway; saffron makes the colour mean something.

Two tannins reinforce instead of clashing, and the nut gives fat.

Duck fat wants a fruit that stays firm through the roast. Quince does.

Membrillo has tannin apple sauce lacks. Slower, and it stays put.

Tannin plus perfume. It does apple sauce work but leaves a longer finish.

Perfumed and tannic. It sweetens without turning the plate into pudding.

Tannin plus perfume. It leaves a finish that the fat cannot smother.

Membrillo isn't only for Manchego. Perfumed sugar against sour milk.

Perfumed sugar against mineral salt. Membrillo travels past Manchego.

The Portuguese original of the guava trick: harder paste, sharper fruit, and the curd copes with both.

Oxidised nuts and quince honey are the same aroma family in two forms.

Goat is lean and rank; quince acid is long enough to reach the end of the bite.

Tannic perfumed fruit and a hard herb, cooked slowly until both go soft.

Membrillo tartness handles the fat the way apple does, with more perfume.

Hard perfumed fruit poached in duck fat goes translucent and savoury.

Perfumed fruit slow-cooked in pig fat: Iberian, and almost never written down.

Both hard, honeyed and faintly medicinal. The tea is the poaching liquid.

Vanillin under quince perfume makes it read as pear that grew up.

Both floral and resinous. The paste turns into a cheese condiment.

Both floral and resinous. The paste becomes something you eat with cheese.