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Wickham Pears
Peel some large cooking pears, halve them, core them, and make a hollow in the centre of each. Put three-quarters of a pound of sugar into a stewpan with a pint of water and a tea-spoonful of essence of cochineal, and when the syrup comes to the boil put in two or three cloves and the pieces of pear, taking care that they do not touch; simmer very gently until tender, and let them get cold in the syrup. Whilst these are cooking, take two ounces of crystallised cherries and chop them up; then put into a basin half a table-spoonful of cream of rice (see RICE, CREAM), and add gradually the yolks of three eggs beaten up with half a pint of milk; sweeten to taste, and flavour with vanilla. Turn this into a jug and stand it in a saucepan of boiling water, stir till it thickens, then take it off the fire, add the chopped cherries, and, when cold, fill half the pieces of pear with the custard and cover them with the other pieces. Arrange neatly on a dish, reduce the syrup until quite thick, and when nearly cold pour it over the fruit.
A Victorian dressed-fruit dish: poached pear halves tinted red, sandwiched with a cherry custard, glazed with reduced syrup. Two things decide whether it works — the variety of pear and the temperature of the custard.
- Use a true cooking pearFirm, dense varieties hold their shape through poaching and take the colour evenly: Bosc, Conference, or any hard underripe pear. A ripe Bartlett or Comice will collapse into the syrup before it is tender.
- Essence of cochinealThis was a liquid carmine colouring, made from the dried cochineal insect, sold to give stewed fruit a bright crimson. A teaspoon of modern red food colouring does the same job; note that cochineal/carmine is still sold under those names and is not vegetarian.
- Cream of riceFinely milled rice flour, not the American hot cereal of the same name. Half a tablespoon is enough to stabilise the custard so it does not curdle or weep once the pears are filled; cornflour in the same quantity behaves similarly.
- The custard is the hingeCooked in a jug set in boiling water, it should be stirred until it coats the spoon; the usual modern guide for an egg custard is around 175-180F, though the recipe gives no temperature. The rice flour affords some protection against curdling, but pushed well past that point it can still catch, and it is hard to retrieve once the cherries are in.
- Poaching, quantities and timeThree-quarters of a pound of sugar is about 1 2/3 cups; the pint here is a British Imperial pint, 20 fl oz, so nearer 2 1/2 US cups than 2. Firm pear halves take 15-25 minutes at a bare simmer depending on ripeness; test with a skewer at the thickest point rather than trusting the clock.
- Keeping them separateThe recipe says only to take care that the pieces do not touch, without giving a reason; pears crowded against one another will both stick and cook unevenly where they meet.
- Reducing the syrupAfter the pears are lifted out, boil the syrup down until it is thick enough to coat a spoon. The recipe says to pour it over when nearly cold, so use it while it is still just pourable rather than letting it set stiff.
- YieldNo quantity of pears is given. Four large pears give eight halves, so four filled portions; you will have custard to spare, which is no hardship.
What the recipe does document is the late-Victorian appetite for fruit served brilliantly coloured: cochineal essence, cheap and widely available, turned pale stewed pears and apples the deep crimson that a dinner-table dessert was expected to have, and it appears freely in cookery books of the period. The name "Wickham Pears" is not explained anywhere in the book, and no origin for it can be supported. The construction -- poach, hollow, fill with a thickened custard, cap, glaze -- is a scaled-down version of the elaborate moulded and glazed compotes of the professional confectioner, rewritten for a household cook with one stewpan and a jug standing in a pan of water.