Chipped Pears

A 1:1 sugar-to-fruit preserve of the old school, cooked long and slow until the slices turn translucent. The whole recipe hinges on heat management: this is a bare simmer for hours, not a boil.

• Very gentle heat means itWith 8 lb of sugar and only a cup of added water, the pan will scorch the moment it is left alone. Use the widest, heaviest pot you have, keep the surface at a lazy bubble, and stir down to the bottom every few minutes for the whole cooking time.
• Quantities are large8 lb of pears plus 8 lb of sugar makes a great deal of preserve, on the order of twenty or more half-pint jars. Halving or quartering the recipe works fine and cuts the cooking time; a smaller batch may be clear and tender well before the stated two to three hours.
• Ginger root, a quarter poundThat is about 4 oz of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced paper-thin -- a hand roughly the size of a fist. It is meant to be eaten along with the fruit, so slice it across the grain and as thin as you can manage. Dried or ground ginger is not a substitute here.
• The lemons go in wholeRind, pith and flesh, sliced thin, seeds discarded. The pectin in the peel and pith and the acid in the juice help the syrup set and discourage crystallising, so do not zest and juice them instead.
• Choose firm pearsBosc, Kieffer or any hard cooking pear holds its shape through hours of simmering. Ripe Bartletts or Comice will collapse into sauce well before the syrup thickens. Peel, core and cut into thin chips no more than an eighth of an inch thick.
• Judging doneness"Clear and tender" is the real test: the pear slices lose their opacity and the syrup sheets slowly off a cold spoon. If it still runs thin after three hours, keep going rather than adding more sugar.
• Putting it upThe original assumes you know what to do next, which it does not state. Follow current guidance for water-bath canning of fruit preserves for jar preparation, headspace and processing time, or simply refrigerate the cooled preserve and use it within a few weeks.