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The cheese doofus’ recent effort to bone up on Manchego led to a cool rediscovery: quince paste. Also called Membrillo, the stuff is made from a tart fruit that’s big in Asia and the Mediterranean. Its flavor is described as a cross between an apple and a pear (at the risk of nit picking, the doofus found it more apple-strawberry). It’s a fun cheese accompaniment and a nice substitution for the standard bunch of grapes. Membrillo is often sold in a small rectangular container, resembles a block of hardened jam, and should be sliced thin.

Whole Foods recommends serving it with buttery, nutty Manchego, which was indeed really tasty. Find Membrillo in the cheese section on a shelf just above the blues.

“Cheese Primer” author Steven Jenkins recommends pairing quince paste (and other fruit pastes) with “peasant” cheeses like Wensleydale (England), Fiore Sardo (Italy) or Roncal (Spain). I haven’t yet tried Fiore Sardo or Roncal, but Wensleydale is slightly crumbly in texture and has a taste profile somewhere between sour and nutty, making it a good contrast to quince’s sweet fruitiness.

The Manchego experiment also exposed the fact that there’s much to love about sheep’s milk cheeses. Two more selections confirmed it. The Spanish Idiazabal ($14.99/pound) was really interesting. It had the buttery-nuttiness of Manchego, but was also slightly smoky. And Mobay ($16.99/pound) was a softer cheese that featured both sheep’s milk and goat’s milk separated by grape ash. The sheep’s milk half, more yellow in color, stood out as being much richer and softer in texture than its slightly rubbery, flatter goat’s milk counterpart. I liked both Mobay and Idiazabal and would serve them even to reluctant tasters.