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Pears Preserved with Ginger Root
The proportion of fruit, sugar, water and lemon is the same as above; adding two ounces of ginger-root to a pound of fruit. Prepare the syrup with the sugar and water. Add the grated rind of half the lemons, the juice of all and the ginger broken into small pieces. When the syrup will nearly string, add the halved fruit and cook until transparent.
A short-form preserve typical of its section: the author assumes you have just read the plain pear recipe above it and will carry over those proportions. What follows are the details that actually decide whether it works.
- The hinge: cook the syrup to thread before the fruit goes in"Will nearly string" means the syrup drips from the spoon in a thread rather than in drops — roughly 225-230F. Add the pears before that and they poach in thin syrup and turn to mush; the sugar has to be concentrated enough to draw into the fruit and make it clear.
- "The same as above" is missingThis entry has no self-contained quantities. A workable pear preserve runs about three-quarters of a pound of sugar and a half cup of water to each pound of prepared fruit, with one lemon per two or three pounds, but the original proportions in this book's preceding recipe are what the author intended and are not reproduced here.
- Two ounces of ginger per pound is almost certainly an errorTwo ounces of ginger per pound is a very heavy proportion -- that is a large knob of root for every pound of pears. Period preserves did sometimes use ginger in this quantity, with the pieces infusing the syrup and then being lifted out, but if you want the pears to taste of pear, treat two ounces as the amount for the whole batch, or use less per pound and taste the syrup as it cooks.
- Which ginger"Ginger-root" is ambiguous here; the instruction to break it into small pieces rather than slice it suggests the hard dried whole root, which snaps and is easy to fish out, though fresh rhizome will also serve. Ground ginger does not -- it clouds the syrup and never gives the clean heat this preserve is after.
- Choose hard pearsSeckel, Bosc or any firm underripe pear holds its shape through a long simmer. Bartlett or a ripe pear collapses before it turns transparent. Halve, core, and peel.
- "Cook until transparent" is a look, not a clockExpect 30 to 50 minutes at a bare simmer depending on the size and firmness of the halves. The flesh goes from opaque white to glassy and slightly amber; boiling hard to hurry it will break the pears apart.
- The lemon is doing workThe juice and grated rind supply acid, and pears are low in both acid and pectin, so the lemon helps the syrup body up; most of the thickening here still comes from the concentration of the syrup itself. Grate the rind before juicing, and keep the white pith out of it.
- SealingThis entry stops at the cooking. Pack hot into hot jars, and follow current water-bath processing guidance for pear preserves rather than the old practice of sealing with paraffin or an inverted jar.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, who cooked for the Pullman Company's private railcars and is among the earliest African American chefs to publish a cookbook under his own name — Malinda Russell (1866) and Abby Fisher (1881) preceded him. Its canning chapter reads like a working cook's shorthand: one full recipe followed by variations that borrow its proportions, the way a professional would note a change rather than rewrite a page. Ginger-preserved pears belong to a long line of preserves that lean on aromatics to lift a mild fruit — pears carry little acid and not much pectin of their own, so lemon and a hard spice do the flavoring and much of the setting between them. The technique of holding fruit in a concentrated syrup until it turns translucent is much older than the jar, with antecedents in the candied and "comfited" fruits of European confectionery, and it survived into American home preserving because it keeps the fruit whole and firm where a boiled jam would not.