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Pickled Sweet Pears
1 Pint Cider Vinegar 11/4 Pounds Granulated Sugar 1/2 Dozen Whole Cloves 1 Dozen Allspice Few Pieces Cinnamon Boil cider and vinegar together for ten minutes; tie spices in muslin cloth and boil in vinegar. Select small sweet pears, pare them and boil gently in the vinegar until the pears look clear; drain off the vinegar, put the pears in jars, reheat vinegar and pour over. Seal, if for keeping.
A straightforward sweet vinegar pickle, of the type meant to sit beside cold meat. Two things in the text need sorting out before you start: the ingredient list and the sealing instruction.
- Cider or cider vinegarThe list calls for 1 pint of cider vinegar, but the method says to "boil cider and vinegar together." As written the quantity is genuinely ambiguous; a pint of cider vinegar alone works and gives a sharper pickle, and splitting it with sweet cider gives the milder version the method implies.
- Sugar to vinegar1 1/4 lb granulated sugar is about 2 3/4 cups, going into 2 cups of liquid. That is a heavy syrup by design: it draws water out of the fruit, keeps the pears firm, and is what makes them keep. Cutting the sugar substantially will give you soft, dull-looking pears.
- Spice amountsHalf a dozen cloves and a dozen allspice berries means exactly that, six and twelve, plus two or three short pieces of stick cinnamon. Tie them in a square of muslin or use a tea ball so nothing speckles the fruit; whole spices left loose also darken the syrup as it reduces.
- The pears"Small sweet pears" probably points to Seckel or a similar small firm variety, though the recipe does not say. Use firm, slightly underripe fruit, whole and peeled, stems left on if you like the look. Ripe, soft pears collapse into mush in a sugar syrup; a ripe Bartlett will not survive this.
- Judging doneness"Until the pears look clear" is the hinge of the recipe and it is a real visual cue, not a poetic one. The flesh goes from opaque white to translucent as the syrup penetrates. The recipe gives no time; go by the look of the fruit, which will vary with size and hardness. Keep the heat low; a hard boil breaks the fruit up.
- The double heatingDraining the syrup off, packing the fruit, then reheating and repouring delivers boiling liquid to the jars, so the pears are covered hot rather than sitting in cooling syrup.
- "Seal, if for keeping"This is open-kettle sealing, standard practice in the period and no longer considered adequate for shelf storage. Treat the result as a refrigerator pickle, where it will hold for a couple of months, or follow a current tested water-bath process with its own stated jar size and processing time.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield. One pint of vinegar with this much sugar will syrup a couple of pounds of small pears, perhaps two pint jars. Give them at least a week before eating so the spice comes forward.
Sweet spiced pickles of whole fruit sat in a different place on the Victorian and Edwardian table than pickles do now: cloves, allspice and cinnamon in a sugared vinegar were the standard treatment for pears, peaches, crabapples and watermelon rind alike, and a jar was set out with roast pork, ham or cold beef the way we might now reach for chutney or mustard. Small hard pears suited the method well, since the long simmer in syrup turned that firmness into an asset.