How was your weekend? Ours was pretty great. We bought pumpkins and drank pumpkin beer and ate pumpkin mac and cheese and I almost bought a pumpkin Halloween costume for Avery (but I didn’t, because my deep-down Pinterest-driven-yet-not-so-crafty personality wants to DIY this situation so she will probably end up being a baby for Halloween).
And to answer your obvious question, no I am not yet sick of the pumpkin. Or of the apples, or the pears or the quinces.
Have you ever tried a quince? They’re admittedly not the most beautiful or convenient of fruits, but when they are baked — or in this case, slow cooked with brown sugar and vanilla bean and pears to a sweet, caramelized fruit butter perfection — they are quite tasty. And by quite tasty, I mean erase the “quite tasty” and replace it with “YUMMMMMMMMMMMMM.”
The thing about fruit butter is, it’s crazy good when made in the slow cooker. I know it might take a little longer to make it that way as opposed to on the stovetop, but my friends, trust — the low-and-slow approach is the way to go. When you let the pears and the quinces and the brown sugar mingle together and cook down and almost caramelize over the heat of the slow cooker, magical things happen. Magical things that include spreading this on toast, pancakes, waffles, or mixing it in yogurt or oatmeal and most especially just eating it straight off the spoon.
It’s so simple to prepare, too — just a little peeling, shredding and mixing and the slow cooker basically does the rest. (Insert confetti emoji!)
Side note that must be discussed because it, too, was part of our weekend’s conversation: How do you pronounce “quince?” Is it like the “qu” in “queen?” Or is it more like a “k” sound at the beginning? Someone wiser in the ways of fruit pronunciations, please enlighten me.
ANYWAY, I used Bartlett pears for this recipe because they soften and cook down really well, but you can also use Bosc pears. And if you don’t have/can’t find a vanilla bean, vanilla extract will work as a fine substitute. Also, I really hope you can find quinces at your local grocery store, because you need to try them in this way, if no other way.
Finally, you can cook the fruit butter for 8 hours, but I highly suggest cooking it the full 12 hours (Errmmm, I KNOW. But it’s worth it) for the most buttery, caramely, delicious-y results.
And on that note, I’m off to have breakfast with my pear-quince butter — I mean, pear-quince butter with my breakfast, AHEM — and peruse Pinterest for the cutest DIY baby Halloween costume ever that requires absolutely no sewing, cutting, stuffing, taping and probably no gluing, either. Happy Monday!
Slow Cooker Pear Quince Butter

Ingredients
- 2 ½ lbs Bartlett pears, peeled, cored and quartered
- 2 ½ lbs quinces, peeled, cored and quartered
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ vanilla bean, or 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
- Grate the quartered pears and quinces, either feeding them through a food processor's shredding blade or using a box grater. Transfer the grated fruit to a 6-quart slow cooker.
- Add the brown sugar and salt to the slow cooker. Run a knife down the center of the vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds. Add the seeds and the bean (or the vanilla extract, if using in place of a vanilla bean) to the slow cooker. Stir until the ingredients are well combined.
- Cook, covered, on HIGH setting 4 hours.
- Remove and reserve the vanilla bean. Transfer the mixture, in batches if necessary, to a food processor. Puree until smooth. Return the mixture to the slow cooker along with the reserved vanilla bean.
- Cook, uncovered, on HIGH setting at least 4 hours (or up to 8 hours), stirring occasionally.
- Remove the vanilla bean. Cool completely. Transfer to jars, sealed tightly, and refrigerate up to 3 weeks.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

I LOVE this recipe! I’ve been doing it all through the pandemic. Besides vanilla, I’ve tried it with cinnamon and cardamom. I’m grateful I found this recipe and hope to continue doing it as long as quince, or membrillos, are in season. 🙂
Hello, Moien, Bonjour!
I live in Luxembourg and my mother in law lives in France. She has giant, old quince tree in her garden and gave me some big beautiful fruit to take home. I was looking for something other than compote to make and came across this delicious recipe! Merci!
In France a quince is a “coing” pronounced “kwen”- (sort of).
Anyway, it is also tradition to put them around your house to make the house smell nice.
Encore, merci!
Christine, Bonjour! This is wonderful to read! Thank you so much. 🙂 I hope you enjoy the fruit butter as much as I do!
I just tried this and boy is it good. I used the last of my neighbour’s wind fallen quinces that were nice and ripe as well as some old type of pear that generally has to be cooked before eating. I didn’t have the patience to grate it all as I don’t have a food processor but I did chop it up into small pieces then cook it on low overnight before pureeing and putting it back in the slow cooker with the top off.
I also just used vanilla essence as I didn’t have a vanilla bean on hand and wanted to make this recipe right away so went ahead with the substitutions.
It turned out thick, a lot redder in colour and beautifully delicious. Low and slow really is best 🙂
sounds yummy– is yummy i have a 40 year old quince tree that now has given me hundreds of quince (qu like queen). have made membrillo (quince paste) now am making quince jelley with the juice form slow cooking and thank you as now have a quince butter recipe!!!!!
I am making this right now in my slow cooker! We have a quince tree and this time of year the race is on to get all of them turned into something edible. One suggestion I have is to amend your post to remind people with immersion blenders that you can do that instead of taking it all out, putting it in a food processor and then returning it to the slow cooker. My friend suggested this to me and I was like “ah-hah! you are so right!”. Second, I think the quince in these pictures are not ripe at all. I actually thought it was all pears until I looked more closely – I have never seen a green quince pictured in a recipe!