Quinces
Quinces look like pears, and, like pears, they are members of the apple family. They are high in sugar, with moderate amounts of dietary fiber (insoluble pectins). Fresh quinces are a good source of vitamin C.
One raw 3.3-ounce quince has 1.7 g dietary fiber and 13.8 mg vitamin C (18 percent of the RDA for a woman, 15 percent of the RDA for a man).
The seeds of the quince, like apple seeds, pear seeds, and apricot, cherry, peach, and plum pits, contain amygdalin, a natural cyanide/sugar compound that breaks down into hydrogen cyanide in your stomach (see apples).
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Baked without sugar to save calories.
Look for: Firm, round, or pear-shape fruit with a pale yellow, fuzzy skin.
Avoid: Small, knobby fruit or fruit with bruised skin.
Store quinces in the refrigerator and use them within two weeks.
Wash the quince under cold running water, wipe off the fuzz, cut off the stem and the blossom ends, core the fruit, and bake or stew it.
When you cook a quince, heat and the acids in the fruit convert the quince’s colorless leucoanthocyanin pigments to red anthocyanins, turning its flesh from pale yellow to pink or red. Cooking also transforms the raw quince’s strong, unpleasant, astringent taste to a more mellow flavor, halfway between apple and a pear.
Lower levels of cholesterol. Foods high in soluble gums and pectins appear to lower the amount of cholesterol in the blood and offer some protection against heart disease. The exact mechanism by which this occurs is still unknown, but one theory is that the pectins in the apple form a gel in your stomach that sops up fats and cholesterol, carrying them out of your body.
