My nose lost track of honey and citrus, but still held a wisp of cool, clean peel, an ideal of sweetness, a thin hit of rose

I could say this quince smelled like roses and citrus and rich women's perfume, but that isn't quite true. I could call this fruit  "the stranger," based on what John Gardner called one of two possible plots in all of fiction - "a stranger comes to town." (man goes on a journey being the other.) Calling quince "the stranger" could be fitting for a tale about the fruit of rooted things written by a woman whose female forebears did not make journeys. ... I inhaled this stranger, my first quince, until my nose lost track of honey and citrus, but still held a wisp of cool, clean peel, an ideal of sweetness, a thin hit of rose. 

K. Lebo, The book of difficult fruit (2021), 219-20