Membrillo is a thickened and sliceable fruit paste, to accompany cheese platters, prepared in autumn, almost always with quince, and sometimes with apples & pears and never, to my knowledge with strawberry tree berries, which grow in our garden, so I gave it a try !

The scientific name of the strawberry tree is ‘arbutus unedo’ and sometimes called ‘madrone’. The sweet and tangy arbutus berries with tiny seeds throughout the flesh (similar to strawberry seeds) are used to make jams, marmalades and strong alcoholic beverages, especially in Portugal and Albania. It mostly grows around the Mediterranean basin but can thrive in colder climates like in our Paris garden and in southern and western Ireland, known as the ‘cane apple'.

We have 3 tall strawberry trees, 2-3 meters tall in our shared garden in Paris, and apart from the birds, no one picks nor eats them and they end up on the ground. The tree manages to simultaneously produce blossoms, the next berries to ripen which are still yellow and orange and this season’s bright red ripe berries.

I decided to pick about 1 kg of fruits and used half to try to make some candied berries in syrup, but they easily fell apart while simmering. They seemed to turn into a jam quite quickly, since they’re rich in pectin, so I decided to keep simmering them until they thickened some more and transferred the mixture to a large square Tupperware and left it out to cool and then refrigerated it. 

Two days later, I decided to have some bread with butter and strawberry tree berry jam. The mixture was so thick that it had to be scraped out, like the cold butter and when I unmolded it, it retained the cubic shape of the plastic container. This is when I thought I could try to make a 2^nd batch and make little rectangles of strawberry tree berry “membrillo”, because I liked the taste as well as the grainy texture, which could be more interesting when accompanying a cheese platter.

I kept it simple and used citrus juices, the empty rinds, sugar, a pinch of salt and fresh bay leaves and rosemary, to macerate everything overnight and I used those extracted juices to simmer the fruits (without adding any water).

The end result is a deliciously sweet, slightly tangy, dense and textured (because of the tiny seeds) “membrillo” paste that was a perfect to accompany our cheese, charcuterie and little “pico” breads (see recipe here) platter, with so much leftover membrillo cubes, that I froze them for another occasion.

Experimentation makes food preparation more satisfying … :)