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Meringued Pears
6 large pears 6 tablespoons sugar Grated lemon-rind Candied ginger 3 egg-whites 1/4 cup powdered sugar Pare and core the pears, place them in a baking-dish and fill the centers with one tablespoon sugar, a little grated lemon-rind or candied ginger. Add three or four tablespoons of water and bake until tender. Cover them with a meringue made with the stiffly beaten whites of eggs and the sugar. Brown quickly.
A straightforward baked-pear dessert whose only real difficulty is the meringue, which is sugared more lightly than modern practice would advise.
- Oven heatThe original gives no temperature. Bake the filled pears at 350F, uncovered, for 30 to 45 minutes depending on ripeness and variety; a Bosc or Anjou will take longer than a ripe Bartlett. They should yield to a skewer but still hold their shape.
- "Brown quickly"The book gives no figure. A short spell in a hot oven, around 425 to 450F for 4 or 5 minutes, watched closely, will colour the peaks; a broiler set well below the element does the same job. A slow oven would dry the meringue and overcook the fruit underneath.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this period "powdered sugar" often meant a finely ground granulated sugar, nearer today's caster or superfine than to boxed confectioners' sugar, though usage by 1930 was not consistent. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and gives a softer, chalkier meringue; superfine granulated is the safer match.
- Meringue proportionsFour tablespoons of sugar to three whites is roughly two-thirds of what a modern soft meringue uses. It beats up quickly but a lightly sugared meringue is more prone to weeping, so build it onto the pears as soon as it is beaten and serve soon after. Adding the sugar gradually once the whites hold soft peaks helps.
- CoringCore from the blossom end with a melon baller or apple corer, leaving the stem end closed so the sugar and ginger stay in the cavity rather than running into the dish.
- Candied gingerUse crystallised ginger, chopped fine -- about a teaspoon per pear. It is an alternative to the lemon-rind, not an addition, though the two together are no hardship.
- The waterThree or four tablespoons is enough to keep the bottoms from scorching and to make a light syrup. Choose a dish that fits the pears snugly or the liquid spreads thin and boils away.
- YieldSix servings, one pear each. Best served warm rather than hot, with the syrup from the dish spooned around the base.
New Delineator Recipes came out of The Delineator, the Butterick pattern company's magazine, and its fruit-dessert chapter reflects a period when a baked apple or pear dressed up with meringue was the standard answer to "something sweet but not rich." Meringue-topped fruit appears in American cookbooks from the later nineteenth century onward, by which time the rotary egg-beater had made whipped whites considerably less laborious. Pear with candied ginger is an older pairing, found in English preserving and stewed-fruit recipes.