Pears, Preserved
INGREDIENTS. -Jargonelle pears; to every lb. of sugar allow pint of water.
Procure some Jargonelle pears, not too ripe; put them into a stewpan with sufficient water to cover them, and simmer them till rather tender, but do not allow them to break; then put them into cold water. Boil the sugar and water together for 5 minutes, skim well, put in the pears, and simmer them gently for 5 minutes.
Repeat the simmering for 3 successive days, taking care not to let the fruit break. The last time of boiling, the syrup should be made rather richer and the fruit boiled for 10 minutes. When the pears are done, drain them from the syrup and dry them in the sun, or in a cool oven; or they may be kept in the syrup, and dried as they are wanted.
TIME. hour to simmer the pears in water, 20 minutes in the syrup.
SEASONABLE.- Most plentiful in September and October. PEAS.
This is candied fruit by the slow method: the pears are not cooked to softness in one go but returned to the syrup over three days so the sugar can move in without collapsing the flesh. The text as reproduced has lost several fractions to the printing, so read the quantities with care.
- The missing fractions"To every lb. of sugar allow pint of water" is most likely half a pint (a scant 300 ml), since that gives a syrup of the right density for candying, where a full pint would be too thin to draw water out of the fruit. The fraction dropped from "TIME. hour to simmer the pears in water" cannot be recovered from the printed text; a quarter, a half or three-quarters of an hour are all possible readings.
- Jargonelle pearsAn early variety, usually said to be of French origin, tapering in shape, and ripening in late summer, though the recipe itself gives September and October as its season. It is uncommon now. Any firm, dense pear will stand in — Seckel, Forelle, or an underripe Bosc. Avoid Comice and ripe Bartlett, which turn to pulp.
- Not too ripe means not ripe at allChoose fruit that is still hard to the thumb. Pears picked at eating ripeness will break in the first simmer, and the whole three-day scheme depends on the fruit staying intact.
- Why three daysEach short boil raises the sugar concentration of the syrup a little as water evaporates, and the fruit equilibrates overnight. Doing it in one long boil would candy the outside and leave the middle watery, or burst the pears outright. "Rather richer" on the last day means boiling the syrup down further before the fruit goes in — aim for a syrup that threads from the spoon, around 230F.
- Keep them wholePeel if you like but leave the stalk on, and prick each pear once or twice with a fine skewer so steam escapes rather than splitting the skin. Move them with a slotted spoon, never by stirring.
- A cool ovenFor drying, keep it low: 150-175F with the door propped ajar works, though a Victorian "cool oven" was generally reckoned somewhat hotter than that. Expect four to eight hours; the pears should be tacky, not sticky-wet. A dehydrator at 135F does the same job.
- StorageSun-dried or oven-dried, the pears keep for months in an airtight tin between sheets of waxed paper. Kept in the syrup, treat them as a refrigerator preserve — the recipe gives no sealing or processing step, so do not store jars at room temperature.
Candied and dried fruit was the tail end of the Victorian dinner, set out on the dessert service with nuts and wine, and it was one of the few ways a household could carry September fruit through to Christmas before reliable canning reached the domestic kitchen. The Jargonelle named here is an old pear, generally traced to France and grown in Britain from the seventeenth century onward; it ripens very early and keeps badly off the tree, which is precisely why a cook would want to preserve it rather than store it. The three-day method Mrs Beeton sets out is the standard confectioner's technique for whole candied fruit, the same one used for glacé cherries and candied angelica, scaled down for a domestic stewpan. Drying "in the sun" is a reminder of how much of this book was written with a house that had a warm windowsill or a shuttered fruit loft, and a range whose oven never quite went cold.