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Baked Pears
Wipe, quarter, and core pears. Put in a deep puddingdish, sprinkle with sugar or add a small quantity of molas- , sprinkle with sugar or add a small quantity of molasses, then add water to prevent pears from burning. Cover, and cook two or three hours in a very slow oven. pears may be baked whole. Seckel pears are delicious when baked.
A minimal recipe that relies on long, gentle heat rather than measurements. The only real variables are oven temperature, the amount of liquid, and the type of pear.
- "A very slow oven"Read this as roughly 250-300F. At that heat the two to three hours given is realistic; at 350F the fruit is likely to collapse and the sugar to scorch well before then.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For about 8 pears, figure 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar (or 1/4 cup molasses) and roughly 1/2 cup water in the dish.
- The hinge is the waterEnough liquid must remain to keep the bottom layer from catching, but not so much that the pears poach instead of bake. Check once an hour and add a spoonful or two of water if the dish is drying out.
- Deep pudding-dishA deep earthenware or stoneware baking dish, covered. Any lidded casserole or a dish tightly sealed with foil does the same job; the cover traps steam and keeps the fruit from drying.
- Seckel pearsA small, very sweet American pear, still grown but seasonal and mostly found at farm markets in early autumn. Bosc holds its shape best among common supermarket varieties; Bartlett will go to pulp.
- MolassesUse an ordinary cane cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter and will dominate the fruit.
- Whole pearsIf baking whole, leave the stems on, stand them upright, and expect the longer end of the time range. They will not cook evenly if crowded.
- ServingGood warm or cold, with the syrup from the dish spooned over, and cream or a plain custard alongside. Eight quartered pears serves six to eight.
Baked pears belong to the long tradition of using the oven's dying heat: after the bread came out, a covered dish of hard fruit could go in and cook for hours on falling temperature. Pears in particular reward this treatment, because many nineteenth-century varieties were gritty and stubbornly firm raw, and only slow heat turned them tender and deep-flavored. The Seckel singled out here is generally traced to a farm south of Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century, and it remained a familiar small dessert pear in eastern American markets in Fannie Farmer's day.