Note E161 — 34.
Reading edition
The word "Quince" preserves only a single letter of its original form. A passage in the Romaunt of the Rose shows an early form of the word, and also exhibits chestnut and cherry in a transitional stage of adoption from the French. The author of the Romaunt writes:
"And many homely trees there were, That peaches, coines, and apples bere; Medlers, plummes, peeres, chesteines, Cherise, of which many one faine is."
It is evident that the English word is a corruption of the French coing, which we may trace through the Italian cotogna to Lat. cotonium or cydonium malum, the apple of Cydon, a town in Crete.—Taylor's Words and Places. In the Paston Letters, i. 245, occurs the word "chardequeyns," that is, a preserve made of quinces. See also the Babees Book, E.E.T. Soc. ed. Furnivall, p. 152. In the ordinances of the household of George, Duke of Clarence, p. 103, charequynses occur under the head of spices, their price being 5 shillings "the boke," or £2 10s. for 10 lbs., A.D. 1468.