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Dried Pears
Cook pears the same as peaches. A few whole cloves, a small piece of cinnamon and a slice of lemon added while pears are boiling will improve their flavor.
A cross-reference rather than a standalone method: it assumes you have already read the book's dried peaches, which in a fireless-cookery chapter means soaking the fruit, bringing it to a boil on the stove, then sealing the covered pot into the insulated cooker to finish on stored heat.
- What a fireless cooker wasAn insulated box packed with hay, felt or asbestos, sometimes with preheated soapstone discs. Food was boiled hard on the range, then shut in the box for several hours. If this recipe belongs to such a chapter, a slow cooker on low, or a heavy pot brought to a boil and left in a low oven, does much the same work.
- Soak firstDried pears are usually given several hours in cold water, or overnight, and the soaking water goes into the pot. Unsoaked fruit takes considerably longer to soften through.
- TimingRoughly 30 to 40 minutes of gentle simmering on the stove, or 3 to 4 hours in a slow cooker on low. Pull the halves while they are still intact.
- SugarThe recipe specifies none; if you sweeten, add the sugar after the fruit has softened, since sugar added at the start slows rehydration.
- The spicesKeep it to the recipe's own measure: a few whole cloves, a small piece of cinnamon stick and a slice of lemon. Use whole spices as written and fish them out; ground clove clouds the syrup.
- Bring it to a boil before it goes in the boxThe whole principle of fireless cookery is that no further heat is supplied. If the pot goes in lukewarm it simply cools, so the contents must be at a rolling boil and the lid tight when it is sealed away.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; a pound of dried pears will make roughly four to six servings. Serve warm or chilled in their syrup, with cream or alongside pork.
Fireless cookers were a genuine domestic craze in the United States from about 1905 into the 1920s, sold commercially and also built at home from a packing crate and hay. The appeal was fuel: a coal or wood range had to be stoked and watched, while an insulated box let a pot of dried fruit or a tough cut of meat finish itself while the fire went out. Dried pears belong to the same economy. Before year-round cold storage, windfall and surplus pears were halved and sun- or kiln-dried, and a jar of them was a winter staple in fruit-growing regions; stewing with clove, cinnamon and lemon was the standard way to bring back some brightness to fruit that had lost most of its perfume in drying. The recipe's brevity, sending the reader to the peaches, suggests a book written on the assumption that the cook already knew the basic method.