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Red Pears, to Preserve
Weigh a dozen pears, peel them, and cut them into halves. Take their weight in sugar, and boil it to a clear syrup with half a pint of water to each pound of sugar. Add half a dozen cloves, an inch of stick cinnamon, a few drops of cochineal, and a glassful of port; put in the pears, and simmer them very gently till they are clear and brightly coloured. Take them out, and put them into glasses. Boil up the syrup, strain it, pour it over the fruit, and cover the glasses in the usual way. Store in a cool dry place. Time, three or four hours.
A Victorian sweet preserve rather than a quick compote: the pears spend hours barely moving in heavy syrup until they turn translucent and take colour. Everything depends on keeping the pan below a bubble.
- The hinge: no boil once the fruit goes inA true simmer, with only the occasional lazy bubble, is what makes the halves clear and keeps them whole. Anything brisker breaks them into shreds and clouds the syrup, and no amount of later boiling will clear it.
- Which pears"Red pears" here probably points to the colour the fruit takes in cooking rather than to a red-skinned dessert variety. Use firm, slightly underripe cooking fruit — Conference, Bosc or any old stewing pear. A ripe Comice is likely to collapse early on.
- WeightsA dozen medium pears runs about 4-5 lb whole. Note that the recipe weighs the pears before peeling, so the sugar is matched to the whole fruit. Half a pint of water per pound of sugar is 10 fl oz imperial, about 1¼ US cups.
- A glassful of portA wineglass in Victorian usage is about 2 fl oz. Any ruby port does; tawny gives a duller brown-red that fights the cochineal.
- CochinealThe original is genuine carmine, made from scale insects, and it was commonly sold as drops by chemists. It is still available as carmine or E120, though it is neither vegetarian nor suitable for the small number of people sensitive to it. Left out, the pears should still take some colour from the port and the long cooking, but less reliably.
- The three or four hoursThat is the whole simmering time at very low heat, not a rolling cook. Check at two hours; the fruit is done when a skewer slides in with no resistance and the halves have gone glassy at the edges.
- Whole spicesFish out the cloves and cinnamon before potting, or lift them with the pears and discard. Left in the jars for months they turn the syrup medicinal.
- "Cover in the usual way"In Victorian practice that meant a disc of brandied paper on the surface and a tied-down parchment or wax cover, with the jars kept cold and dark. For anything you intend to keep, use sterilised preserving jars and a current, tested water-bath processing time for pears in syrup; otherwise treat the jars as a fridge preserve and eat them within a few weeks.
- YieldSeveral jars, depending on how far the syrup is reduced. Serve cold with cream, or with cold meats.
Hard "stewing" or warden pears were a fixture of English kitchens long before dessert varieties became common, and the trick of cooking them for hours until they turn a deep ruby is very old — the change is often attributed to the fruit's own tannins and pigments shifting under long, gentle heat, though here the colour is chiefly port and cochineal, and medieval and early modern recipes do speak of baking wardens until they are red. The recipe hedges the effect with port and a few drops of cochineal to guarantee the result, since a jar of brilliantly coloured fruit was as much a piece of table display as a food. Preserves of this kind sat in the store cupboard alongside pickles and jellies to be brought out with cold meats or as a winter sweet.