To make a tarte o medlers. Take medlers when they be rotte, and bray them with the yolkes of foure egges, then ceaſon it vp wyth ſuger and ſinamon and ſwete butter, and ſo bake it.
Proper Newe Booke of Cookerye c. 1557.

Rosalind: I’ll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit i’ the country;
for you’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that’s the right virtue of the medlar.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act III, Scene II, line 44