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Pears, Preserved
Gather the pears before they are quite ripe, pare, halve, core, and weigh them, and put them into a deep jar, allowing three pounds of sugar to every four pounds of pears, and just enough water to moisten the sugar and keep the fruit from burning. The strained juice and thinly-pared rind of a lemon and an inch of whole ginger may be put with every two pounds of pears. Place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, and let the fruit steam gently for six or seven hours. Turn it into jars, fasten these down securely, and store in a cool dry place. Two or three drops of cochineal may be added to the pears after they are cooked, to improve the appearance. It must not be expected that pears preserved as above will keep good more than three or four months. Probable cost, 8d. per pound.
This is a Victorian sugar preserve intended for sealed jars kept at room temperature for months, and that is where it fails by current standards. The notes below explain what the instructions assume and why the method should not be followed.
- Pears sit on the wrong side of the acid linePears usually fall below pH 4.6 -- the threshold below which Clostridium botulinum cannot grow -- but readings vary with variety and ripeness, and some (notably Asian pears) test above it, which is why tested recipes for those call for added lemon juice. Here the lemon is only something that "may be put with every two pounds", so a batch made without it carries no acid guarantee.
- No processing step after sealingThe fruit is steamed in a jar standing in a pan of water, then turned into other jars and fastened down. Nothing sterilises the second set of jars, nothing establishes a vacuum seal, and no headspace, processing time or finishing temperature is specified. A long gentle cook is not the same as a measured water-bath process.
- The sugar is not high enough to preserve on its ownThree pounds of sugar to four of fruit, thinned with water, gives a syrup rather than the near-saturated, low-water-activity set of a true jam -- which may well be why the book concedes the preserve will not keep beyond three or four months. Use a current tested recipe for preserved or canned pears instead.
- "Fasten these down securely" is not a modern seal"Fasten these down securely" in a book of this date most likely meant a paper, parchment, bladder or waxed-cloth cover tied over the rim rather than anything that draws a vacuum. Reading it as a screw-band lid on a modern jar implies a seal the method never actually produces.
- What the vessels meanThe "deep jar" is presumably an earthenware or stoneware jar used as the inner vessel of an improvised bain-marie, with the saucepan of boiling water as the outer one. It is a double boiler, not a preserving pan and not a canner.
- CochinealGenuine cochineal is carmine, extracted from the dried bodies of the scale insect Dactylopius coccus. It is still a permitted food colour, though it is neither vegetarian nor suitable for the small number of people who react to it. It does nothing but tint the fruit pink.
- "Probable cost, 8d. per pound"Eightpence in pre-decimal British currency, a stock feature of Cassell's entries. It is a period price signal for the household budget and has no bearing on the method.
Cassell's compiled its Dictionary of Cookery in the later nineteenth century for households that needed autumn fruit to last until spring, and its preserving entries reflect a kitchen with a cool dry larder rather than a refrigerator. Steaming hard, slightly under-ripe pears for six or seven hours in a jar set in water is a deliberate choice: the gentle, indirect heat lets the sugar penetrate without breaking the halves, which is why the fruit emerges whole rather than collapsed as it would in a fast-boiled jam. Ginger and lemon rind are often said to have been common aromatics for pear and quince preserves in nineteenth-century English books, and cochineal — from the confectioner's shelf — was added because cooked pears go a dull fawn that Victorian cooks considered unappetising on the table. The candid admission that the result keeps only three or four months is worth noting: the compilers knew the limits of their own method, and said so.