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Every single quince I ever try to eat, without a fault, has parts on it that have an awful onion-like flavour and leave a disagreeable oniony aftertaste. Most of the fruit is completely free of that flavour, and I have never felt even a hint of it in any quince-flavoured food, like lollipops or juices.

Unfortunately, I can't quite figure out where that awful flavour is contained, and several hypotheses I tried (dark patches of the skin? flesh near the bottom? skin on the bottom? everything touching the hairy part at the bottom?) proved fruitless.

Is there a reliable way to tell which parts of quince will have that awful oniony taste?

Dragomok
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    I've never had an oniony taste from a quince, but then I don't eat them all that often. Some of these sorts of fruit, such as Nashi pear and Ya pear (different genus to quince, but related) have very bitter or sour around the central seed bearing bit. – bob1 Oct 18 '21 at 19:57
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    I've never had an onion taste from a quince, are these home-grown ones or store bought? – GdD Oct 18 '21 at 20:22
  • I can’t say that I’ve ever eaten a quince, but could this be like cilantro, where some people can taste the nasty soapy flavor, and other people can’t? – Joe Oct 18 '21 at 22:26
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    Quinces are quite widely eaten in some parts of Europe, and count as a sweet food, not savory. I have never found a piece of kitchen lore that indicates that they may have a specific aroma sometimes, oniony or not. Your individual perception must be a really, really rare one, not like the cilantro situation Joe references, but more of a "one in a million" thing - so I am afraid it is unlikely that you will ever get an answer. – rumtscho Oct 19 '21 at 11:19
  • @bob1 From my experience, a lot of European pears tend to be sour around the seed part, too. – Dragomok Oct 21 '21 at 08:50
  • @GdD Store bought. I have eaten both imported from tropical regions and grown locally in Poland, and all of them had that bit with oniony aftertaste. – Dragomok Oct 21 '21 at 08:51
  • @rumtscho Hopefully you're right and it will turn out it's a *"one in a million"*-type question that will get an answer after a year (or two), and not *"one in about 8 billion"*-type question that will not get an answer at all. ;P – Dragomok Oct 21 '21 at 09:03
  • Is it possible that you used the same knife or chopping board to first chop some onions, and then didn't wash the utensils sufficiently before dealing with the quinces? – Digital Trauma Sep 08 '22 at 23:10
  • @DigitalTrauma A reasonable guess, but that's impossible: the last time I ate quinces, I lived alone, had separate board and knife for fruit, I washed everything after use, and onions were banned from my house. – Dragomok Sep 17 '22 at 07:04
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    Glad I found this. I was going crazy trying figure out why I was tasting onion in the quince. I didn't cut with a knife, or anything that touched onions, in fact ate it right in the store. Glad to know I am not alone. – sotn Dec 16 '22 at 21:07

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