A cheese made with fruits? It really is, and you’ll certainly see that the flavour of this dish with strange name will perfectly fit Christmas time with its spicy scent!
The medlar cheese comes directly from spicy fruit pastes widespread during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which were often prepared with quinces and pears and, we could say, are not related to modern quiddany we prepare nowadays. In the seventeenth century they made pastes with other fruits too, such as pippins, apricots, cherries and, of course, medlars. In the past they used the All Spice, a spice with complex scent that embodies the flavours of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger… And of course black pepper too! For our version, we decided to sweeten it up with vanilla beans from Madagascar and orange zest. Your turn to do your experiments! 🙂
With this recipe, therefore, we add a historic dish to our collaboration with the series “Gorchlach: the Legend of Cordelia“, and also for our special medlar series. Go and have a look at the recipes we have already published 🙂 .
To know more about the All Spice, take a look at the bottom of the Banana bread with chocolate chunks 🙂 .
If you try one of the recipes on the blog, take a photo and publish it on Instragam with the hashtag #fratelliaifornelli and tagging our profile @fratelliaifornelli.
Medlar cheese
Ingredients
- medlar well bletted
- sugar
- vanilla
- orange zest
- salt
Instructions
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To begin it is necessary that the medlars are fully bletted and soft. Place about 2 kg into a saucepan and add 750 ml of cold water, without removing any seeds or peel. Then, using a potato masher or a meat mallet, smash the fruits and mix them well with water.
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Let simmer about 20 minutes, so that the pulp comes off completely from the seeds and peel. This step is important, and will avoid having to peel them one by one by hand.
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Once this is done, pour the puree into a large colander, under which you have previously placed a container to collect the pulp. And now, you just have to mix thoroughly a few minutes and all the pulp will separate! 🙂 Not bad, to save time and effort!
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Now, sieve the puree with a clean cheese cloth and squeeze as much as possible, being careful, however, not to burn yourselves. Put aside all the juice that we'll need to prepare a wonderful medlar jelly.
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But let's fo back to our pulp. Weigh it and add half weight in sugar. Mix with a pinch of salt, vanilla and grated organic orange peel.
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Put on the stove and heat until the sugar has dissolved continuing to stir to prevent it from sticking on the bottom.
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Once ready, pour your medlar cheese in molds and let it set.
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Once cold, flip them onto a wire rack, and let them dry until they have lost some more water.
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Keep them in a box in the refrigerator and serve your medlar cheeses sprinkled with powdered sugar and grated orange zest.
18 Comments on “Medlar cheese”
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750 of water was way to little
waarom noemt dit kaas, dit is zoet.
Ik,maak ook mispelgelei, en van de pulp maak ik jam (dat meer op moes/puree lijkt)
Met wat eet je die mispelkaas dan ?
Lieve, ‘cheese’ is also used for a fruit preserve that has thickened not by reaching the ‘geleerpunt’ (jellyfying temperature?), but by cooking it long enough to remove excess water. The well known Portuguese Membrillo (quince cheese) is another example. Membrillo is often served with a strong tasting cheese, which probably works fine with this meddlar cheese too.
(Fruit butters are like fruit cheeses, but they still are a bit running…)
Can I make medlar cheese now (early November) to give as Xmas presents? Will it keep that long?
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Thank you so much for this recipe. We have a medlar tree in the garden which I asked for because of fond memories of eating them at my Granny’s in Leigh-on-sea in Essex. However we got about 5kg crop this year so too many to eat one by one (love the well bletted medlar, soft sweet and apricot tasting! There is an art to eating them though – quite a messy business!). I didn’t think there would be many recipes as they have too many seeds to get the pulp off easily so glad to find a way to do that. Looking foward to a nice lot of cheese and jelly.
How much vanilla do you put in?
Hello, does mashing the medlars not leave the liquid for the jelly cloudy? Thanks Peter
This is not a recipe for medlar jelly but for medlar cheese. Totally different!
If yoh read the method yoyu will see that once the pulp is removed for the cheese, there remaining liquid can be made into jelly
What quantity of medlars is this recipe using? What’s the consistency I’m going for?
Hi Alexandra! I’m sorry, I think we forgot to mention that on the recipe! Anyway, this recipe is using 2 kg of medlars.
The final consistency of the mixture before pouring it into your molds will be quite firm; you can try it by taking some of the pulp with a table spoon, turning it upside-down. The pulp should stick to the spoon.
I am now looking forward to autumn 2019. Yesterday I was offered a box of medlars to try when they are ready this autumn. Searching for medlar recipes I found this website and am looking forward to experimenting with the recipe.
I have a quince tree which carried its first crop last autumn so I had a quince fest., trying different recipes, made some membrillo, quince cheese which was a bit of a faff to make but is delicious as a snack with Manchengo cheese, also tried putting some stem ginger in quince jelly, also delicious.
Medlar chutney or jelly as an unusual Christmas present sounds exciting. Mmmmm! Roll on the autumn.
Hi Joyce! You’re looking for recipes a lot of time before the autumn!
We never tried the the medlar cheese with Manchengo, only with local cheese. We’ll give it a try 🙂
This is just outstanding! I need to get bletted!
Can you tell me the difference between the Medlar Cheese and the jam as both recipes seem very similar? With the same amount of sugar ratio to pulp, how is one soft and spreadable and the other set and solid? Thanks.
Hello Teresa, well the different is that in the Medlar Cheese recipe you have one more (and very important) passage that you don’t have in the jam recipe. After boiling the fruits and separating seeds and peel from the pulp using a colander, you have to take the pulp and sieve it through a cheese cloth: by doing this you separate the liquid part of the pulp from the more solid one. You can make the cheese with the solid part now, while you can prepare some medlar jelly with the liquid part.