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Pear Delight
For each portion of this dessert, cut a piece of sponge cake. Over it pour 2 T pear syrup. On this, place 1½ cooked pear. Fill hollow with whipped cream. Over all pour 1 T raspberry sauce.
Mrs. Lester.
An assembly recipe rather than a cooked one, and it assumes a pantry stocked with home-canned pears. The proportions are given per serving, so scale it by the number of guests.
- The abbreviationsT is a tablespoon: 2 tablespoons of pear syrup soaking into the cake, 1 tablespoon of raspberry sauce over the top. Nothing here is a teaspoon.
- "Pear syrup"Most likely the sweet liquid the pears were canned or poached in rather than a bottled syrup. If you are poaching fresh pears, keep the poaching liquid and reduce it slightly so it clings instead of running off the cake.
- 1½ cooked pear1½ cooked pear -- Three halves per portion, which is generous by modern standards; two halves is plenty. Canned pear halves serve the purpose, though the recipe specifies only that the pears be cooked.
- The hollowThe cavity left by the core is the whole point of the arrangement. Set the halves cut side up so the whipped cream sits in them rather than sliding down the plate.
- Raspberry sauceIn collections of this kind this is usually crushed sweetened raspberries, sometimes strained and thickened. Warmed seedless raspberry preserve loosened with a spoonful of water gives the same effect.
- Assemble lateThe syrup will soften the sponge and the cream will weep if the plates stand. Have the components ready separately and build each plate as it goes out.
- CakeA plain sponge or genoise is right; it absorbs syrup without collapsing. Butter cake is too rich against the cream and fruit.
Church and charity cookbooks are full of desserts like this one, built from parts a household already had on hand: a sponge cake, a jar of put-up pears, cream, and a spoonful of raspberry preserve -- a soaked cake base, fruit, and whipped cream, assembled rather than baked. Naming a dish a "delight" was a common gesture in these community collections, where the contributor's name was recorded alongside the recipe, as Mrs. Lester's is here.